Talk:Dana Scott

Resources

 * hopl.murdoch.edu.au
 * I've put several comments in the main page, with details of his posts and PhD students. To incorporate.  Charles Stewart 05:33, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Independence of the Boolean prime ideal theorem
From the version before my major edit:
 * His contributions include early work in automata theory, for which he received the ACM Turing Award in 1976, and the independence of the Boolean prime ideal theorem.

Although I find this claim (attrib of BPI thm) plausible, since Scott has worked with Stone spaces, I couldn't find any source for this claim other than syndicates of this wikipedia article. I've pulled this sentence until I hear confirmation. Charles Stewart 05:13, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Problem with James Halpern link
It links to an article about a different person with the same name. The James Halpern mentioned here is http://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/html/id.phtml?id=7681

Church of the Lattice-Way Saints
Alan J. Perlis in his rather well-known article "Epigrams on Programming" said in item 60 that

"Dana Scott is the Church of the Lattice-Way Saints" (SIGPLAN Notices Vol. 17, No. 9, September 1982, pages 7 - 13).

Does anyone know what he means by this?


 * He is referring to the Mormons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.48.194.176 (talk) 10:42, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Reversed name?
Is there any particular reason why his name is given as "Scott Stewart Dana" at the start of the article and on the photo caption? Is this just an error? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)

That was the result of a recent edit by an anonymous user. I have reverted that change. &mdash; Tobias Bergemann 18:08, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Is the category of domains cartesian closed?
There was an anonymous edit, a year and a half ago, who disputed and deleted my claim that the category of domains is not cartesian closed, which I cited as a motivation for the theory of equilogical spaces. This is a tricky issue, so rather than simply provide a cryptic comment justifying my remark I'll explain a little here.

In fact there are many categories of domains, depending on what counts as the morphisms, and whether there are restrictions on which DCPOs are objects of the category. The two most obvious candidates to be called the category of domains are DCPO, the category of DCPOs under any Scott-continuous maps, and DCPO(_|_), the category of strict Scott-continuous maps, ie. maps f for which f(_|_)=_|_. When Dana Scott says the category of domains is not cartesian closed, it is because he takes the category to be the latter, with strict morphisms.

The closedness of the former, and the non-closedness of the latter is asserted in ''Achim Jung (1990). The classification of continuous domains. LICS, IEEE Press.'' I believe proofs are to be found in his PhD thesis, although I have not checked. --- Charles Stewart (talk) 09:51, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

PhD students
I've put together some lists of students of Scott at Talk:Dana Scott/students, which is based closely on Scott's own list, grouped by institution, and with some hyperlinking. I am not sure how best to incorporate this material into the article, if at all; the info on thesis titles at MGP might help. Quite a few of these students are notable, and certainly should be mentioned in the article: I've wikified the ones I reckon so, most are redlinks. I've also put dates of the positions Scott held & visiting positions, where I have them. &mdash; Charles Stewart (talk) 14:05, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Scott's theorem
In Set Theory Scott's theorem states that V=L is incompatible with the existence of a measurable cardinal (see eg Kanamori, The Higher infinite, p. 49). This is considered a seminal result (p. 44). I cannot find the result mentioned in wikipedia (PS: except for very short mentions); it should be added somewhere, I regret I have not enough time; I will just shortly mention it in the biography. Paolo Lipparini (talk) 19:15, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
 * To my recollection I have never heard this called "Scott's Theorem", even if he was the first to prove it. He's proved a lot of other stuff too :-).  But sure, it's important enough to mention; I just wouldn't necessarily give it that name. --Trovatore (talk) 19:18, 4 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Scott proved so many theorems that "Scott's theorem" is ambiguous, I agree not using this name. Anyway some set theorists call it as such Paolo Lipparini (talk) 19:39, 4 January 2023 (UTC)