Stephen Kleene

person Professor Stephen Cole Kleene (1909-01-05 -

1994-01-26) /steev'n (kohl) klay'nee/ An American

mathematician whose work at the University ofWisconsin-Madison helped lay the foundations for modern

computer science. Kleene was best known for founding the

branch of mathematical logic known as recursion theory and

for inventing regular expressions. The Kleene star and

Ascending Kleene Chain are named after him.

Kleene was born in Hartford, Conneticut, USA. He received his

bachelor of arts degree from Amherst College in 1930. From

1930 to 1935, he was a graduate student and research assistant

at Princeton University where he received his doctorate in

mathematics in 1934. In 1935, he joined UW-Madison

mathematics department as an instructor. He became an

assistant professor in 1937.

From 1939 to 1940, he was a visiting scholar at Princeton's

Institute for Advanced Study where he laid the foundation

for recursive function theory, an area that would be his

lifelong research interest. In 1941 he returned to Amherst as

an associate professor of mathematics.

During World War II Kleene was a lieutenant commander in the

United States Navy. He was an instructor of navigation at the

U.S. Naval Reserve's Midshipmen's School in New York, and then

a project director at the Naval Research Laboratory in

Washington, D.C.

In 1946, he returned to Wisconsin, eventually becoming a full

professor. He was chair of mathematics, and computer sciences

in 1962 and 1963 and dean of the College of Letters and

Science from 1969 to 1974. In 1964 he was named the Cyrus

C. MacDuffee professor of mathematics.

An avid mountain climber, Kleene had a strong interest in

nature and the environment and was active in many conservation

causes. He led several professional organisations, serving as

president of the Association of Symbolic Logic from 1956 to

1958. In 1961, he served as president of the International

Union of the History and the Philosophy of Science.

Kleene pronounced his last name /klay'nee/. /klee'nee/ and

/kleen/ are extremely common mispronunciations. His first

name is /steev'n/, not /stef'n/. His son, Ken Kleene

[email protected], wrote: "As far as I am aware this

pronunciation is incorrect in all known languages. I believe

that this novel pronunciation was invented by my father."

(gopher://gopher.adp.wisc.edu/00/.data/.news-rel/.9401/.940126a).

(1999-03-03)