Richard Zach's blog

These two Assistant Professorships in philosophy have just been advertised
at LMU Munich (see below). The deadline for applications is July 2nd, 2010. (German language skills are not mandatory.) Soon also several postdoctoral and doctoral positions in philosophy (at the new Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy) will also be advertised.

(1) Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich is seeking applications for an
Assistant Professorship in Logic and Philosophy of Language
at the Chair for Logic and Philosophy of Language (Professor Hannes
Leitgeb) at the Faculty for Philosophy, Philosophy of Science and the Study
of Religion. The position, which is to start from October 1st 2010, is for
three years with the possibility of extension. Technically, it is a
so-called 'Akademische Ratsstelle auf Zeit' in the Bavarian university
system, which means basically that one has the rights and perks of a civil
servant.

The appointee will be expected (i) to do research in logic and philosophy
of language, (ii) to teach five hours a week in these or in related areas,
and (iii) to contribute to the new Munich Center for Mathematical
Philosophy (MCMP) which is about to be founded at the LMU. The successful
candidate will have (iv) a PhD in philosophy or logic, and (v) teaching
experience in philosophy or logic.

The appointment will be made within the German A13 salary scheme. More
information on this position can be found at:

http://www.uni-muenchen.de/aktuelles/stellenangebote/wissenschaft/20100617151216.html

Women are currently underrepresented in the Faculty, therefore we
particularly welcome applications for this post from suitably qualified
female candidates. Given equal qualification, severely physically
challenged individuals will be preferred.

Applications (including CV, certificates, list of publications) should be
sent to

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Fakultät für Philosophie, Wissenschaftstheorie und Religionswissenschaft
Geschäftsstelle
Hauspost Fach 41
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
80539 München

E-Mail: alexander.nawrath@lrz.uni-muenchen.de

by July 2nd, 2010.
Contact for informal inquiries: Prof. Dr. Hannes Leitgeb

(2) Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich is seeking applications for an
Assistant Professorship in Mathematical Philosophy
at the new Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy (MCMP) which will be
tied to the Chair in Logic and Philosophy of Language (Prof. Dr. Hannes
Leitgeb) at the Faculty for Philosophy, Philosophy of Science and the Study
of Religion. The position, which is to start from October 1st 2010, is for
three years with the possibility of extension. Technically, it is a
so-called 'Akademische Ratsstelle auf Zeit' in the Bavarian university
system, which means basically that one has the rights and perks of a civil
servant.

The appointee will be expected (i) to do philosophical research assisted by
logical or mathematical methods, (ii) to teach five hours a week in areas
of philosophy in which logical or mathematical methods are applied, and
(iii) to take on management tasks in the new Munich Center for Mathematical
Philosophy. The successful candidate will have (iv) a PhD in philosophy or
logic, and (v) teaching experience in philosophy or logic.

The appointment will be made within the German A13 salary scheme.

More
information on this position can be found at:

http://www.uni-muenchen.de/aktuelles/stellenangebote/wissenschaft/20100617151904.html

Women are currently underrepresented in the Faculty, therefore we
particularly welcome applications for this post from suitably qualified
female candidates. Given equal qualification, severely physically
challenged individuals will be preferred.

Applications (including CV, certificates, list of publications) should be
sent to

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Fakultät für Philosophie, Wissenschaftstheorie und Religionswissenschaft
Geschäftsstelle
Hauspost Fach 41
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
80539 München

E-Mail: alexander.nawrath@lrz.uni-muenchen.de

by July 2nd, 2010.
Contact for informal inquiries: Prof. Dr. Hannes Leitgeb

Two months ago, Blogger turned off FTP publishing on blogs, which meant I couldn't update LogBlog anymore.  It's taken a while, but the blog has now moved.  Well, I managed to import all the old posts into Drupal, the CMS we use at the University of Calgary and which generates the rest of my site.  I still need to fix the URLs, add archive pages, get the blogroll to display, etc., but at least I can post again.  Your feed reader should be automatically redirected to the new feed, but if it isn't, here's the URL:

http://www.ucalgary.ca/rzach/rss.xml

If you find any broken links, disappeared images, commenting weirdness, etc., do let me know!

If you see this, I probably don't have to tell you the new URL for the mainpag, but in any case, here it is:

http://www.ucalgary.ca/rzach/blog/

Here are my slides from my PM@100 talk.

Just up on the SEP, by Yaroslav Shramko and Heinrich Wansing, an entry on truth values.

Happy Ada Lovelace Day!

Rózsa Péter (1905-1977) was a Hungarian mathematician and early contributor to the theory of (primitive) recursive functions. She received her PhD in 1935 from (what is now) Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. Her fellow student Laszlo Kálmár had introduced her a few years earlier to the then brand-new work of Gödel, and she proceeded to study the class of (primitive) recursive functions first clearly defined by Gödel in his 1931 incompleteness paper. In a number of articles in the 1930s, she laid the groundwork for the study of hierarchies of sub-recursive functions and clarified the notion of primitive recursive function. I'll just mention four of her contributions on the subject: In her paper, "Über den Zusammenhang der verschiedenen Begriffe der rekursiven Funktion" (Math. Ann., 1935) she showed that course-of-values recursion and nested recursion can be reduced to ordinary primitive recursion. In "Konstruktion nichtrekursiver Funktionen" (Math. Ann., 1935), Pétér simplified and expanded on Ackermann's work, and proved that there are multiply recursive but not-primitive recursive functions. In "Über die mehrfache Rekursion" (Math. Ann., 1937), she studied multiple recursion in more detail and showed that the hierarchy of k-recursive functions is proper. In "Zusammenhang der mehrfachen und transfiniten Rekursionen" (JSL, 1950), she proved the equivalence of k-fold recursion and transfinite recursion along ω^k. Her early work on primitive recursive function theory is set out in her monograph, Rekursive Funktionen (1951), translated into English as Recursive Functions (1967). She also wrote a popular book on mathematics, Playing with Infinity, which was translated into 14 languages.

Pétér was barred from teaching in 1939 due to her Jewish heritage, but obtained positions at the Budapest Teacher's College in 1945 and at her alma mater in 1955. She was the first female mathematician to be elected to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She retired in 1976.

Women in Science (San Diego Supercomputer Center)
Biographies of Women Mathematicians (Agnes Scott College)
MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive

If you have access to Oxford Scholarship Online, you can now read Mancosu's excellent collection The Philosophy of Mathematical Practice via the internets.

Robin Milner died on March 20. He was a leading theoretical computer scientist who developed the LCF theorem prover, the ML programming language, and introduced the π-calculus. He was founding director of the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh and then Professor of Computer Science at Cambridge. Milner was a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the ACM, and winner of the Turing Award.

From today's mini-AIR:

The Oscillating Humans Project, announced here, is searching for a living specimen - an exemplar - of an oscillating human.

DEFINITION: For purposes of the project, an Oscillating Human is someone who consistently, repeatedly, over many years, expresses opinions directly opposite to opinions he or she expressed earlier, always ignoring and/or denying the existence of copious, easily found clear documentation of the earlier opinions.

From Abstruse Goose:

Sorry for the long silence...

You may have heard by now, but in case you haven't: The Group in Logic, Language, and Information at King's College is threatened by "budget cuts": looks like the administration is just willfully destroying it by firing several faculty.

Information and links to protest sites etc. given here.