John Myhill

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John Myhill
Born(1923-08-11)11 August 1923
Garden of Eden theorem
SpouseAkiko Kino (died 1983)
Scientific career
FieldsMathematics
ThesisA Semantically Complete Foundation for Logic and Mathematics (1949)
Doctoral advisorWillard Van Orman Quine
Other academic advisorsLynn Harold Loomis

John R. Myhill Sr. (11 August 1923 – 15 February 1987)[1] was a British mathematician.

Education

Myhill received his Ph.D. from Harvard University under Willard Van Orman Quine in 1949.[2] He was professor at SUNY Buffalo from 1966 until his death in 1987. He also taught at several other universities.

His son, also called John Myhill, is a professor of linguistics in the English department of the University of Haifa in Israel.[3]

Contributions

In the theory of formal languages, the Myhill–Nerode theorem, proven by Myhill[4] and Anil Nerode,[5] characterizes the regular languages as the languages that have only finitely many inequivalent prefixes.

In

Cantor–Bernstein–Schroeder theorem
that characterizes the recursive isomorphisms of pairs of sets.

In the theory of

Garden of Eden theorem, stating that a cellular automaton has a configuration with no predecessor if and only if it has two different asymptotic configurations which evolve to the same configuration. He is also known for posing the firing squad synchronization problem
of designing an automaton that, starting from a single non-quiescent cell, evolves to a configuration in which all cells reach the same non-quiescent state at the same time; this problem was again solved by Moore.

In

law of the excluded middle, known as intuitionistic Zermelo–Fraenkel
. He also developed a constructive set theory based on natural numbers, functions, and sets, rather than (as in many other foundational theories) basing it purely on sets.

The Russell–Myhill paradox or Russell–Myhill antinomy, discovered by Bertrand Russell in 1902 (and discussed in his The Principles of Mathematics, 1903)[7][8] and rediscovered by Myhill in 1958,[9] concerns systems of logic in which logical propositions can be members of classes, and can also be about classes; for instance, a proposition P can "state the product" of a class C, meaning that proposition P asserts that all propositions contained in class C are true. In such a system, the class of propositions that state the product of classes that do not include them is paradoxical. For, if proposition P states the product of this class, an inconsistency arises regardless of whether P does or does not belong to the class it describes.[7]

In

musical scales
described by John Clough and Gerald Myerson and named by them after Myhill.

See also

  • Diaconescu–Goodman–Myhill theorem

References

  1. ^ Revue philosophique de Louvain, Volume 85, 1987, p. 603.
  2. ^ John Myhill at the Mathematics Genealogy Project.
  3. ^ "Prof. John Myhill". english.haifa.ac.il. Retrieved 5 April 2021.
  4. ^ John Myhill (1957). Finite automata and representation of events (WADC Report TR). Wright Air Development Center.
  5. JSTOR 2033204
    .
  6. doi:10.1007/978-0-387-09639-1_9
    .
  7. ^ a b "Russell's Paradox". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  8. ^ Irvine, Andrew David (2016). "Russell's Paradox". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "The reason is that in Appendix B Russell also presents another paradox which he thinks cannot be resolved by means of the simple theory of types."
  9. ^ "Problems Arising in the Formalization of Intensional Logic." Logique et Analyse 1 (1958): 78–83
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