TARSKI, ALFRED

Tarski, Alfred: translation

(1901/2–1983)

Born and educated in Warsaw, Tarski went to the USA in 1939. He taught at Harvard, and then moved to the university of California at Berkeley in 1942. It was in the 1930s that he began his pioneering work on the concept of truth in formalized languages, culminating in 1933 in the celebrated paper of that name (see also convention T, truth theory ). Together with Abraham Robinson (1918–74) he created the mathematical theory of models . His work on decidable and undecidable axiomatic systems made him a pioneer of computer science, and in the course of his mathematical career he published over 300 papers and books, on topics ranging from set theory to geometry and algebra. Tarski's logical work is well seen inA Decision Method for Elementary Algebra and Geometry(1948), and for philosophers he is best represented in the collectionLogic, Semantics, and Metamathematics(1956).