Alonzo Church

High school (ages 12+)
Science & Technology

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Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/alonzo-church

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. When was Alonzo Church born?June 14, 1903
2. Where was Alonzo Church born?Washington, D.C
3. What is the career?Professor of Mathematics and Logic at Princeton University and UCLA
4. What is the academic lineage?Supervised doctoral theses of notable figures including Alan Turing
5. Who was Alonzo Church?Alonzo Church was a brilliant mathematician who helped create the ideas that form the basis of computers. He invented lambda calculus, a powerful way to describe any computable function.
6. What is lambda calculus?Lambda calculus is a simple symbolic system that lets you write any computable function using only functions and their applications. It shows how complex computer programs can be built from basic building blocks.

Lambda Calculus: A formal system in mathematical logic for expressing computation based on function abstraction and application.
Church-Turing Thesis: A hypothesis stating that any function computable by an algorithm is computable by a Turing machine or lambda calculus.
Entscheidungsproblem: The 'decision problem' concerning the existence of a general algorithm to determine the truth of mathematical statements.
Computability Theory: The branch of computer science and logic that studies which problems can be solved by algorithms.