12 Facts About Alonzo Church

Alonzo Church was an American computer scientist, mathematician, logician, and philosopher who made major contributions to mathematical logic and the foundations of theoretical computer science.

Alongside his doctoral student Alan Turing, Church is considered one of the founders of computer science.

Alonzo Church was born on June 14,1903, in Washington, DC, where his father, Samuel Robbins Church, was a justice of the peace and the judge of the Municipal Court for the District of Columbia.

Alonzo Church was the grandson of Alonzo Webster Church, United States Senate Librarian from 1881 to 1901, and great-grandson of Alonzo Church, a professor of Mathematics and Astronomy and 6th President of the University of Georgia.

Alonzo Church published his first paper on Lorentz transformations in 1924 and graduated the same year with a degree in mathematics.

Alonzo Church stayed at Princeton for graduate work, earning a Ph.

Alonzo Church taught philosophy and mathematics at Princeton for nearly four decades, from 1929 to 1967.

Alonzo Church was a Plenary Speaker at the ICM in 1962 in Stockholm.

Alonzo Church received honorary Doctor of Science degrees from Case Western Reserve University in 1969, Princeton University in 1985, and the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York in 1990 in connection with an international symposium in his honor organized by John Corcoran.

Alonzo Church was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 1966, to the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences in 1967, to the National Academy of Sciences in 1978.

Alonzo Church died on August 11,1995, at the age of 92.

Alonzo Church is credited with formulating the Slingshot Argument, which suggests that sentential references must be truth-values, rather than propositions.