University Distinguished Lecture

Biography

Harvey M. Friedman joined The Ohio State University’s faculty in 1977 as a professor in the Department of Mathematics. In 1982, he received Ohio State’s Distinguished Scholar Award; and, in 1987, the University conferred on him its highest faculty honor, the title of Distinguished University Professor.

Professor Friedman is a leader in mathematical logic and recognized worldwide as the leading researcher in the Foundations of Mathematics (FOM). He is well known for calibrating the logical strength of mathematical statements through his introduction and development of “reverse mathematics” and for his diverse examples of concrete, accessible statements in discrete mathematics with unexpected logical properties.

He has greatly advanced our understanding of, and also has largely realized goals suggested by, Gödel’s work. In 1987, Professor Friedman received the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award “for his revitalization of the foundations of mathematics, his penetrating investigations into the Gödel incompleteness phenomena, and his fundamental contributions to virtually all areas of mathematical logic.”

Professor Friedman is an innovative, boundary-breaking scholar. In fact, the chairs of three different Ohio State departments jointly nominated him for the University Distinguished Lecture Series. He is also a prolific writer, and his work in model theory, proof theory and intuitionism, recursion theory, set theory, and computer science has been widely published in the most highly regarded peer-reviewed journals. In addition, he has been an invited speaker for more than 200 prestigious lectures, worldwide.

A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he has also had nearly continuous funding from the National Science Foundation since 1967. He has been listed in Guinness World Records as the world’s youngest professor at 18 years old at Stanford University, and Science Digest named him among the “top 100 scientists in the U. S. under 40.”

Lecture navigation

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2. Biography
3. Lecture Abstract
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