Emil Leon Post
| Emil Leon Post | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | February 11, 1897 Augustów, Suwałki Governorate, Russian Empire (now Poland) |
| Died | April 21, 1954 (aged 57) New York City, U.S. |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Alma mater |
City College of New York (B.S., Mathematics, 1917) Columbia University (Ph.D., Mathematics, 1923) |
| Known for |
Formulation 1, Post correspondence problem, completeness-proof of Principia's propositional calculus |
Emil Leon Post (February 11, 1897 – April 21, 1954) was a Polish-born American mathematician and logician. He is best known for his work in the field that eventually became known as computability theory.
Post was born in Augustów, Suwałki Governorate, Russian Empire (now Poland) into a Polish-Jewish family that immigrated to New York City in May 1904. His parents were Arnold and Pearl Post.
Post had been interested in astronomy, but at the age of twelve lost his left arm in a car accident. This loss was a significant obstacle to being a professional astronomer. He decided to pursue mathematics, rather than astronomy.
Post attended the Townsend Harris High School and continued on to graduate from City College of New York in 1917 with a B.S. in Mathematics.
After completing his Ph.D. in mathematics at Columbia University, supervised by Cassius Jackson Keyser, he did a post-doctorate at Princeton University in the 1920–1921 academic year. Post then became a high school mathematics teacher in New York City.
Post married Gertrude Singer in 1929, with whom he had a daughter, Phyllis Goodman. Post spent at most three hours a day on research on the advice of his doctor in order to avoid manic attacks, which he had been experiencing since his year at Princeton.
In 1936, he was appointed to the mathematics department at the City College of New York. He died in 1954 of a heart attack following electroshock treatment for depression; he was 57.
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