Stephen Cole Kleene

Posted by Tel Asiado Jan 6, 2008

Stephen Cole Kleene (1909-1994), American mathematician and logician, born in Hartford, Connecticut, celebrates his 99th birthday anniversary today January 5. With his mathematical logic, he worked on recursion theory which laid the foundation of theoretical computer science.

A number of mathematical concepts are named after him:

• Kleene algebra
• Kleene fixpoint theorem
• Kleene hierarchy
• Kleene recursion theorem
• Kleene star.

Kleene invented 'regular expressions,' and was a leading American advocate of 'mathematical intuitionism.'

Stephen Cole Kleene was awarded two distinguished honors:

• Speaker at the International Congresses of Mathematicians, Edinburgh 1958 - Title of lecture to congress: "Mathematical Logic: Constructive and Non-Constructive Operations."
• American Mathematical Society (AMS) Prize 1983... for three important papers which formed the basis for later developments in generalized recursion theory and descriptive set theory "Arithmetical predicates and function quantifiers", "On the forms of the predicates in the theory of constructive ordinals (second paper)", and "Hierarchies of number-theoretic predicates".