Wednesday, January 01, 2003

2003: A Year-Long Celebration of Geniuses

What do Alonzo Church, Andrey Kolmogorov and John von Neumann have in common?
  1. They are all brilliant mathematicians.
  2. Their research has helped establish the fundamentals of much of computer science.
  3. They were all born in 1903.
  4. All of the above.
Of course the answer is "All of the above." Throughout the year (in addition to the usual posts) we will honor these men and their research in the 100th anniversary of their births.

I almost added Frank Ramsey, also born in 1903, to the list. Certainly Ramsey Theory has played a major role in theoretical computer science. But the popularity of Ramsey Theory is due more to Paul Erd�s than to Ramsey who was mostly a philosopher.

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