数理逻辑学家,也是道家。写了好几本普及逻辑的读物,都很有趣味。amazon有他的书
卖。
Raymond Merrill Smullyan (born May 25, 1919)[1] is an American mathematician
, concert pianist, logician, Taoist philosopher, and magician. Born in Far
Rockaway, New York, his first career (like Persi Diaconis a generation later
) was stage magic. He then earned a BSc from the University of Chicago in
1955 and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1959. He is one of many
logicians to have studied under Alonzo Church.
Born in Far Rockaway, New York, he showed musical talent, winning a gold
medal in a piano competition when he was aged 12.[1] The following year, his
family moved to Manhattan and he attended Theodore Roosevelt High School in
The Bronx as this school offered courses suited to his musical talents, but
he left to study on his own as the school did not offer similar courses in
mathematics.
He attended several colleges, studying mathematics and music.
While a Ph.D. student, Smullyan published a paper in the 1957 Journal of
Symbolic Logic showing that Gödelian incompleteness held for formal
systems considerably more elementary than that of Gödel's 1931 landmark
paper. The contemporary understanding of Gödel's theorem dates from
this paper. Smullyan later made a compelling case that much of the
fascination with Gödel's theorem should be directed at Tarski's theorem
, which is much easier to prove and equally disturbing philosophically. The
culmination of Smullyan's lifelong reflection on the classic limitative
theorems of mathematical logic is quite readable:
Smullyan, R M (2001) "Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems" in Goble, Lou,
ed., The Blackwell Guide to Philosophical Logic. Blackwell (ISBN 0-631-20693
-0).
Smullyan is the author of many books on recreational mathematics,
recreational logic, etc. Most notably, one is titled What Is the Name of
This Book?.
He was a professor of philosophy at City College in New York and at the
University of Indiana. He is also an amateur astronomer, using a six inch
reflecting telescope for which he ground the mirror.