Paul Lorenzen | |
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Born | March 24, 1915 Kiel, Germany |
Died |
October 1, 1994 (aged 79) Göttingen, Germany |
Fields | Philosophy, Mathematics |
Paul Lorenzen (March 24, 1915 – October 1, 1994) was a German philosopher and mathematician, founder of the Erlangen School (with Wilhelm Kamlah) and inventor of game semantics (with Kuno Lorenz).
Lorenzen studied with David Hilbert as a schoolboy and he was one of Hasse's students at the University of Göttingen until his promotion in 1938. He became pupil of Krull in University of Bonn. His main work was on the foundations of mathematics, in proof theory. He created and modified constructive mathematics. Lorenzen taught at Stanford, the University of Texas, and Boston University in the USA. He was John Locke Lecturer in 1967/1968.
Lorenzen came in 1962 to University of Erlangen (South Germany) and founded the Erlangen School of epistemological constructivism there.
He wrote with Kamlah the famous book Logical Propaedeutic ("Logische Propädeutik") and worked on game semantics (Dialogische Logik) with Kuno Lorenz. With Peter Janich he invented protophysics of time and space. He developed constructive logic, constructive type theory and constructive analysis.
Lorenzen's work on calculus Differential and Integral was dedicated to Hermann Weyl. Lorenzen used Weyl's technique to develop a predicative analysis, which can reconstruct classical analysis, without the principle of excluded middle or the Axiom of Choice. He worked also on Gerhard Gentzen's cut elimination to find a way to continue Hilbert's program after the results of Gödel.