Alonzo Church Mathematician Philosopher Computer Scientist Alonzo Church

Alonzo Church: Mathematician. Philosopher. Computer Scientist? Alonzo Church is a mathematician and philosopher who developed the very first computer programming language known as Lambda Calculus. Church also worked with Alan Turing in the Church-Turing Thesis, which also was another huge impact on the world of computer science. “He was a pioneer in the field of mathematical logic and theory of computation” -Alan Turing LAMBDA CALCULUS ACCOMPLISHMENTS Lambda (λ) Calculus is a system that is in the world of math logic and computer science for creating a computation by way of combining variables using abstraction. Today, λ Calculus has applications in several different areas: mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science. λ Calculus, along with Alan Turing’s Turing machine are important models in computation. EX: Start with the function: 2 x • Rewritten in Lambda as λx[2 x] • Now solve this when x=3. • λx[2 x](3) [2(3)] =6 Church died in 1995 being a well decorated man in the math and computer science world. He earned a Ph. D. from Princeton University. His contributions to number theory and theories of algorithms and computation laid a solid foundation to computer science. CHURCH TURING THESIS The Church-Turing thesis states that any realworld computation can be written into an equivalent computation involving a Turing Machine.