Complete theories

Abraham Robinson is best known among mathematicians for his revolutionary discovery and development of nonstandard analysis, a rigorous theory of infinitesimals that Robinson used to unite mathematical logic with the larger body of modern mathematics. Born in Waldenburg, Lower Silesia, in 1918, Robinson spent much of his childhood in Breslau. In show more 1933, he emigrated from Nazi Germany to Palestine, where he studied mathematics at the Hebrew University with Abraham Fraenkel. Robinson studied briefly at the Sorbonne, barely escaping to England when the Germans invaded France in June 1940. During World War II, he worked at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough, analyzing the design of supersonic airfoils. Beginning with his Ph.D. on model theory at the University of London in 1949, Robinson began to eclipse his wartime aeronautical research. Robinson first taught at the Cranfield College of Aeronautics and, beginning in 1951, in the Mathematics Department at the University of Toronto. In 1957, he returned to pure mathematics as Fraenkel's successor at Hebrew University and was appointed a professor of mathematics and philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1962. Robinson finally moved to a position at Yale University in 1967, where he continued his research on model theory and nonstandard analysis until his untimely death in 1974. (Bowker Author Biography) show less