Talk:Moses Schönfinkel

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William Hatcher, while spending time in St Petersburg during the 1990s, was told by Soviet mathematicians that Schonfinkel died in wretched poverty, having no job and but one room in a collective apartment. After his death, the rough ordinary people who shared his apartment burned his manuscripts for fuel (WWII was raging). The few Soviet mathematicians around 1940 who had any discussions with Schonfinkel later said that those mss reinvented a great deal of 20th century mathematical logic. Schonfinkel had no way of accessing the work of Turing, Church, and Tarski, but had derived their results for himself. Stalin did not order Schonfinkel shot or deported to Siberia, but blame for Schonfinkel's death and inability to publish in his final years can be placed on Stalin's doorstep.202.36.179.65 06:50, 25 February 2006 (UTC)


 * This is plausible, and may well be true, however, we have three hearsay links here: anonymous editor User:202.36.179.65 reported that William Hatcher reported that unnamed "Soviet mathematicians" reported that Schonfinkel had derived certain results. I have not found William Hatcher's report in any of the easy places (Google, Google Scholar, Google Books); could we at least get a solid citation for that?  Otherwise, we don't really have anything even remotely resembling a reliable source, do we? Thanks. --Macrakis 20:39, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

In the biography of H.B. Curry in Seldin and Hindley's "To H.B. Curry: Essays on Combinatory Logic, Lambda Calculus and Formalism" it's mentioned that in the late 20's Schoenfinkel was in a mental institution, does anyone know any more about this? Antic-Hay (talk) 21:00, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Categories say he was: a Russian logician; a Russian Jew; a Ukrainian Jew; a Russian person of Ukrainian descent; infobox says he was of Russian nationality and citizenship. When he was born and when he attended university, there was no Ukraine; from 1914-1924, he was at Göttingen; then he went to Moscow in the USSR. I would guess that under the USSR's nationality system, his 'nationality' would have been considered 'Jewish', not 'Russian' or 'Ukrainian'. I don't know enough about the USSR to know if he would have been an RSFSR = Russian citizen, a USSR citizen, or both, but it would seem at least that he should be categorized as a "Soviet Jew", and the categories "Ukrainian Jew" and "Russian person of Ukrainian descent" seem inappropriate. Can we get some help from someone who understand the Soviet system better? --Macrakis (talk) 23:15, 3 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Soviet social system uses term [Intelligentsia] for mid-class people. Sciense, art, culture, enginering, medicine - considered as good professions for jew. Not military, politics, farming or indusry workers. USSR had official politic to keep national identity and their authorities dealing with federal gorvenment, continuing old imperial traditions. But jew known to havу very special system so often had problems. We had not jew rich neithe dirty like shown in german propaganda that years. Monk-like poor and crasy jew is ok. if he doing unpractical science or ununderstandable art, it's his own choice or will of his god. In USSR official top-class were industrial worker, not office clerk etc. Engeneirs often were poor, had additional janitor job for money. But jews avoid phisical jobs. NOwiking (talk) 08:47, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Software named after him
Programming: (golfing language), (typescript utilities) MarMi wiki (talk) 13:17, 22 June 2022 (UTC)