Jan Łukasiewicz
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.031116
On this date in 1878 Polish mathematician Jan Łukasiewicz was born in Lwów, Austria-Hungary (now Lviv, Ukraine). Łukasiewicz primarily worked in the field of logic and is known for several axiomizations of classical propositional logic and for the first explicitly axiomatized non-classical logical calculus. He also developed what became known as Polish notation for writing arithmetic, algebra, and logic statements without any parentheses where the operator precedes the operands: (5 x 3) + 7 becomes + 7 x 5 3. Now it is mostly used in programming languages. Łukasiewicz was widely influential in Polish mathematical circles, founding a school of thought that was later made well-known by Alfred Tarski with whom Łukasiewicz worked with on several papers.
Date in History: 21 December 1878
