Georg Kreisel

Who is Georg Kreisel?

Georg Kreisel FRS is an Austrian-born mathematical logician who has studied and worked in Great Britain and America. Kreisel came from a Jewish background; his family sent him to England before the Anschluss, where he studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge and then, during World War II, worked on military subjects. After the war he returned to Cambridge and received his doctorate. He taught at the University of Reading until 1954 and then worked at the Institute for Advanced Study from 1955 to 1957. Subsequently he taught at Stanford University and the University of Paris. Kreisel was appointed a professor at Stanford University in 1962 and remained on the faculty there until he retired in 1985.

Kreisel worked in various areas of logic, and especially in proof theory, where he is known for his so-called "unwinding" program, whose aim was to extract constructive content from superficially non-constructive proofs.

Kreisel was elected to the Royal Society in 1966; Kreisel remained a close friend of the late Francis Crick whom he had met in the Royal Navy during WWII.

While a student at Cambridge, Kreisel was the student most respected by Ludwig Wittgenstein.