Raymond Smullyan

Home * People * Raymond Smullyan



Raymond Merrill Smullyan, (May 25, 1919 - February 6, 2017 ) was an American mathematician, logician, philosopher, magician, pianist, and professor of Philosophy at Indiana University Bloomington. He held a Ph.D. in mathematics on the theory of formal systems from Princeton University under advisor Alonzo Church. Smullyan was author of fourteen books and of numerous research articles on the topics of mathematical logic, first-order logic, set theory, theory of computable functions, recreational mathematics, mathematical games and puzzles, retrograde chess problems, and Eastern philosophy. He has been a contributor to Scientific American.

=See also=
 * Retrograde Analysis

=Selected Publications=

1959

 * Raymond Smullyan (1959). Theory of Formal Systems. Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, advisor Alonzo Church

1960 ...

 * Raymond Smullyan (1961). Theory of Formal Systems. AM-47, Annals of Mathematics, Princeton University Press
 * Raymond Smullyan (1968). First-Order Logic. Springer

1970 ...

 * Raymond Smullyan (1977). The Tao Is Silent. HarperOne
 * Raymond Smullyan (1977). Is God a Taoist? MIT
 * Raymond Smullyan (1978). What Is the Name of This Book? The Riddle of Dracula and Other Logical Puzzles. Prentice Hall
 * Raymond Smullyan (1979). The Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes. Knopf

1980 ...

 * Raymond Smullyan (1981). The Chess Mysteries of the Arabian Knights. Knopf
 * 8/8/8/1r1b4/B7/8/8/3k4
 * Where is the white king?


 * Raymond Smullyan (1982). The Lady or the Tiger? - ladies, tigers, and more logic puzzles. Random House
 * Raymond Smullyan (1982). An Epistemological Nightmare. MIT
 * Raymond Smullyan (1985). To Mock a Mockingbird and Other Logic Puzzles: Including an Amazing Adventure in Combinatory Logic. Knopf
 * Raymond Smullyan (1987). Alice in Puzzle-Land: A Carrollian Tale for Children Under Eighty. Penguin Books, Introduction by Martin Gardner

1990 ...

 * Raymond Smullyan (1992). Satan, Cantor and Infinity: Mind-Boggling Puzzles. Knopf
 * Raymond Smullyan (1992). Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems. Oxford University Press
 * Raymond Smullyan (1993). Recursion Theory for Metamathematics. Oxford University Press
 * Raymond Smullyan (1994). Diagonalization and Self-Reference. Oxford University Press
 * Raymond Smullyan (1995). First-Order Logic. Dover Publications
 * Raymond Smullyan (1996). Set Theory and the Continuum Problem. Oxford University Press
 * Raymond Smullyan (1998). The Riddle of Scheherazade: And Other Amazing Puzzles. Mariner Books

2000 ...

 * Raymond Smullyan (2000). To Mock a Mockingbird - And Other Logic Puzzles. Oxford University Press
 * Raymond Smullyan (2002). Some Interesting Memories: A Paradoxical Life. Thinkers' Press
 * Raymond Smullyan (2003). Who Knows? A Study of Religious Consciousness. Indiana University Press
 * Raymond Smullyan (2007). The Magic Garden of George B. And Other Logic Puzzles. Polimetrica
 * Raymond Smullyan (2008). Logical Labyrinths. A K Peters
 * Raymond Smullyan (2009). Satan, Cantor and Infinity: Mind-Boggling Puzzles. Dover Publications

2010 ...

 * Raymond Smullyan (2010). King Arthur in Search of His Dog and Other Curious Puzzles. Dover Books on Mathematics
 * Raymond Smullyan (2011). The Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes. Dover Books on Mathematics, reprint of the Knopf, 1979 edition
 * Raymond Smullyan (2013). The Gödelian Puzzle Book: Puzzles, Paradoxes and Proofs. Dover Publications
 * Jason Rosenhouse, Raymond Smullyan (2014). Four Lives: A Celebration of Raymond Smullyan. Dover Publications

=External Links=

Smullyan

 * Raymond Smullyan from Wikipedia
 * Raymond Smullyan - Wikiquote
 * Raymond Smullyan | Department of Philosophy | Indiana University Bloomington
 * The Mathematics Genealogy Project - Raymond Smullyan
 * Smullyan biography, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of St Andrews, Scotland
 * Raymond Smullyan and friends from Kadon Enterprises, Inc.
 * Mathematician and puzzle-maker Raymond Smullyan dead at 97 by Hannah Osborne, International Business Times, February 10, 2017
 * In Joop van Oosterom and Raymond Smullyan, chess loses two colorful characters by David R. Sands, Washington Times, February 14, 2017

A Mathematical Mystery Tour

 * A Mathematical Mystery Tour - BBC Horizon Documentary (1984), edited 1985 Nova version, Vimeo Video
 * featuring Jean Dieudonné, Michael Atiyah, Greg Moore, Paul Erdős, René Thom, Raymond Smullyan, and Ivor Grattan-Guinness - White Knight at 42:25


 * Intro
 * Fermat's Last Theorem 1:40
 * Goldbach's conjecture 1:49
 * Riemann hypothesis 2:02
 * Classification Problem for 4-D Manifolds 2:12
 * P versus NP problem 2:26
 * Invariant Subspace Problem for Hilbert Spaces 2:38
 * A Mathematical Mystery Tour 3:00
 * 1) Proof Beyond Doubt 5:06
 * 2) Proof 5:45
 * 3) Euclid's theorem 6:58
 * 4) Are there infinitely many twin primes? 7:25
 * 5) Goldbach's conjecture 7:50
 * 6) Mertens conjecture 8:17
 * 7) Fermat's Last Theorem 9:10
 * 8) Erdős' problems 12:39
 * 9) The Foundations of Mathematics 13:21
 * 10) Chinese mathematics 13:25
 * 11) Egyptian mathematics 13:42
 * 12) Euclid's Elements 15:00
 * 13) Parallel postulate 16:04
 * 14) Non-Euclidean geometry 16:10
 * 15) Hypercube 16:24
 * 16) Klein bottle 17:00
 * 17) Discovery or Invention 19:21
 * 18) Platonism 19:49
 * 19) Pythagorean theorem 19:57
 * 20) Golden rectangle 20:48
 * 21) A Question of Infinity 24:20
 * 22) Infinity 24:20
 * 23) Pi 24:50
 * 24) Mersenne prime 26:36
 * 25) Countable set 27:58
 * 26) Uncountable set 30:00
 * 27) Aleph number 30:50
 * 28) Cracks in the Foundation 32:06
 * 29) Mathematical logic 32:06
 * 30) Russell's paradox 32:32
 * 31) Principia Mathematica 36:26
 * 32) Back to Basics 38:32
 * 33) Bourbaki Group 38:40
 * 34) Hilbert's program 41:25
 * 35) White Knight 42:25
 * 36) The Uncertain Future 44:46
 * 37) Gödel's incompleteness theorems 44:52
 * 38) Continuum hypothesis 46:30
 * 39) Four color theorem 46:38
 * 40) Computer-assisted proof 50:04

=References= Up one Level