Martin Davis: An Overview of his Work in Logic, Computer Science, and Philosophy
Logic in Computer Science
2025-06-11 v1
Abstract
In his autobiographic essay written in 1999, ``From logic to computer science and back'', Martin David Davis (3/8/1928--1/1/2023) indicated that he viewed himself as a logician \emph{and} a computer scientist. He expanded the essay in 2016 and expressed a new perspective through a changed title, ``My life as a logician''. He points out that logic was the unifying theme underlying his scientific career. Our paper attempts to provide a consistent vision that illuminates Davis' successive contributions leading to his landmark writings on computability, unsolvable problems, automated reasoning, as well as the history and philosophy of computing.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2506.08588,
title = {Martin Davis: An Overview of his Work in Logic, Computer Science, and Philosophy},
author = {Liesbeth De Mol and Yuri V. Matiyasevich and Eugenio G. Omodeo and Alberto Policriti and Wilfried Sieg and Elaine J. Weyuker},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.08588},
year = {2025}
}