Alfred Tarski

Reviews / Votes

'The Fefermans' biography is an enthralling success story of a self-confident, enterprising, untiring, and entrepreneurial scientist, and a rich and scrupulous account of the numerous achievements accomplished by this powerful logician and his colleagues in philosophy of logic, semantics, set theory, decision procedures, universal algebra, algebraic logic, axiomatic geometry, topology, and model theory.' Hourya Benis Sinaceur, Notices of the AMS 'A chain smoker, a heavy drinker, a frequent user of 'speed', a relentless womaniser, and a man of Napoleonic self-regard and worldly ambition. This is not how one pictures an eminent Professor of Logic. And yet, this is how the great logician, Alfred Tarski, emerges from this marvellous biography. The Fefermans, of course, are uniquely qualified to lead the reader through the intricacies of Tarski's work, which they do very engagingly and with great expository skill. Tarski's colourful personality is conveyed with prose that is economical, superbly readable and extremely vivid, and the whole book is a joy to read.' Ray Monk, author of biographies of Wittgenstein and Russell 'The story of a remarkable Polish mathematician called Alfred Tarski, who fled the Nazi persecution, came to the United States, and single-handedly turned the Mathematics Department of the University of California at Berkeley into the world center for the study of logic. Anita and Sol Feferman's captivating biography pulls no punches, describing his womanizing and his drug use along with his mathematical achievements.' Keith Devlin, Stanford University and author of Goodbye Descartes: The End of Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of the Mind 'It was a great pleasure to absorb myself in this prodigious work. The heritage of Tarski's Poland is just one of the many themes which the authors develop with sympathy, yet unflinchingly reveal as heavy with conflicts of identity and loyalty. I am amazed at how much they got out of pre-war Poland and at the way they unfold so much of the interior 'logic world' in the course of telling the story. An expert 'interlude' is devoted to explaining the problem of formalising truth, the central spring of Tarski's creative work.' Andrew Hodges, author of Alan Turing: The Enigma 'Here we have a vivid portrait of Alfred Tarski as a man of enormous energy and focus, devoted to logic, women and slivovitz, entirely lacking in self-doubt, and ambivalent about his Jewish heritage. The Fefermans provide a richly textured account of the cultural, intellectual, and political worlds in which Tarski lived -- first in interwar Poland and then in Berkeley, where he built his logic empire. They also draw highly individualized portraits of the many people who figured in Tarski's life and career. The work that made Tarski one of logic's giants is lucidly explained in a series of compact interludes. This is a wonderful book on many levels.' Elliot Sober, University of Wisconsin, Madison