ALP members Eugenio Omodeo and Alberto Policriti just finished editing a
book titled “Martin Davis on Computability, Computational Logic, and Mathematical Foundations” in the Springer series “Outstanding Contributions to Logic”.
The book is available at
from which front and back matters can be downloaded for free. Those free parts include:
- Anil Nerode’s foreword and editors’ preface;
- an up-to-date bibliography of Martin Davis;
- the original report (1958) which gave birth to the celebrated Davis-Putnam satisfiability procedure;
- the original Davis & Putnam report (1959) which evolved into the Davis-Putnam-Robinson theorem paving the way to the Davis-Putnam-Robinson-Matiyasevich (negative) solution of Hilbert’s 10th problem.
About this book (from Springer’s web page):
This book presents a set of historical recollections on the work of Martin Davis and his role in advancing our understanding of the connections between logic, computing, and unsolvability. The individual contributions touch on most of the core aspects of Davis’ work and set it in a contemporary context. They analyse, discuss and develop many of the ideas and concepts that Davis put forward, including such issues as contemporary satisfiability solvers, essential unification, quantum computing and generalisations of Hilbert’s tenth problem.
The book starts out with a scientific autobiography by Davis, and ends with his responses to comments included in the contributions. In addition, it includes two previously unpublished original historical papers in which Davis and Putnam investigate the decidable and the undecidable side of Logic, as well as a full bibliography of Davis’ work.
As a whole, this book shows how Davis’ scientific work lies at the intersection of computability, theoretical computer science, foundations of mathematics, and philosophy, and draws its unifying vision from his deep involvement in Logic.