Ob algoritmicheskoi nerazreshimosti problemy tozhdestva slov v teorii grupp [leading to the Lenin Prize, 1957]

Moscow, USSR: Trudy Matematicheskogo instituta inteni V. A. Steklova, 44, 1955. Text in Russian. Because this marketplace does not accommodate Cyrillic charcters, all Russian language words from this book have been here transliterated into Latin script. Good condition. Spine is worn. Edges of the cover are sunned. Pages are clean and unmarked. From Encyclopedia: "In 1952 Novikov constructed a finitely defined group H with an unsolvable word problem, that is, a group with no algorithm to solve the word problem for H. This result was first announced in his 1952 paper “Ob algoritmicheskoi nerazreshimosti problemy tozhdestva” (“On the Algorithmic Unsolvability of the Word Problem”). The complete proof was published three years later [i.e. in this 1955 edition]. In 1957 William W. Boone gave another example of a group with an unsolvable word problem, and therefore this result is called the Novikov-Boone theorem. Important corollaries derived from this theorem have suggested that there are many unsolvable algorithmic problems in fundamental branches of classical mathematics. Novikov received the Lenin Prize for this significant achievement in 1957." This volume was among several dozen books from Alonzo Church's library that we were lucky enough to purchase at auction in New Jersey. Several of the books contain his signature, or a presentation inscription to him. Unfortunately, this volume does not have those signs of his ownership. [But please check our inventory for several others that do]. Alonzo Church (1903 - 1995) was professor of mathematics at Princeton University (1929-1967) and of mathematics and philosophy at UCLA (1967-1990). He was the founding editor of the JOURNAL OF SYMBOLIC LOGIC. Among his most influential contributions are Church's Theorem, Church's Thesis, and the Lambda Calculus. His work was of major importance in mathematical logic, recursion theory, theoretical computer science, and functional programming languages in general. Professor Church's creation of lambda calculus was the foundation for the LISP programming language and provided the semantic model for ALGOL. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, British Academy, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Church is regarded by many as the greatest American logician of the 20th century. [For more on Church's contributions, see items 250, 251, 321, 394, and 533 in Hook and Norman's ORIGINS OF CYBERSPACE, A LIBRARY ON THE HISTORY OF COMPUTING...]. First Complete Edition. Softcover. Good condition. Illus. by NOT a library discard. 144pp. Great Packaging, Fast Shipping.