11 Facts About Lambda calculus

Lambda calculus is a formal system in mathematical logic for expressing computation based on function abstraction and application using variable binding and substitution.

Lambda calculus is Turing complete, that is, it is a universal model of computation that can be used to simulate any Turing machine.

Lambda calculus has applications in many different areas in mathematics, philosophy, linguistics, and computer science.

Lambda calculus has played an important role in the development of the theory of programming languages.

Lambda calculus is a current research topic in category theory.

Related searches

Lambda calculus was introduced by mathematician Alonzo Church in the 1930s as part of an investigation into the foundations of mathematics.

Thanks to Richard Montague and other linguists' applications in the semantics of natural language, the lambda calculus has begun to enjoy a respectable place in both linguistics and computer science.

The lambda calculus provides a simple semantics for computation, enabling properties of computation to be studied formally.

Syntax of the lambda calculus defines some expressions as valid lambda calculus expressions and some as invalid, just as some strings of characters are valid C programs and some are not.

Lambda calculus cannot express this as directly as some other notations: all functions are anonymous in lambda calculus, so we can't refer to a value which is yet to be defined, inside the lambda term defining that same value.

Church–Rosser property of the lambda calculus means that evaluation can be carried out in any order, even in parallel.