Stephen Kleene
Kleene, Stephen Cole
Stephen Cole Kleene

    Professor Stephen Cole Kleene (1909-01-05 -
   1994-01-26) /steev'n (kohl) klay'nee/ An American
   mathematician whose work at the University of
   Wisconsin-Madison helped lay the foundations for modern
   computer science.  Kleene was best known for founding the
   branch of mathematical logic known as recursion theory and
   for inventing regular expressions.  The Kleene star and
   Ascending Kleene Chain are named after him.

   Kleene was born in Hartford, Conneticut, USA.  He received his
   Bachelor of Arts degree from Amherst College in 1930.  From
   1930 to 1935, he was a graduate student and research assistant
   at Princeton University where he received his doctorate in
   mathematics in 1934.  In 1935, he joined UW-Madison
   mathematics department as an instructor.  He became an
   assistant professor in 1937.

   From 1939 to 1940, he was a visiting scholar at Princeton's
   Institute for Advanced Study where he laid the foundation
   for recursive function theory, an area that would be his
   lifelong research interest.  In 1941 he returned to Amherst as
   an associate professor of mathematics.

   During World War II Kleene was a lieutenant commander in the
   United States Navy.  He was an instructor of navigation at the
   U.S. Naval Reserve's Midshipmen's School in New York, and then
   a project director at the Naval Research Laboratory in
   Washington, D.C.

   In 1946, he returned to Wisconsin, eventually becoming a full
   professor.  He was chair of mathematics, and computer sciences
   in 1962 and 1963 and dean of the College of Letters and
   Science from 1969 to 1974.  In 1964 he was named the Cyrus
   C. MacDuffee professor of mathematics.

   An avid mountain climber, Kleene had a strong interest in
   nature and the environment and was active in many conservation
   causes.  He led several professional organisations, serving as
   president of the Association of Symbolic Logic from 1956 to
   1958.  In 1961, he served as president of the International
   Union of the History and the Philosophy of Science.

   Kleene pronounced his last name /klay'nee/.  /klee'nee/ and
   /kleen/ are extremely common mispronunciations.  His first
   name is /steev'n/, not /stef'n/.  His son, Ken Kleene
   , wrote: "As far as I am aware this
   pronunciation is incorrect in all known languages.  I believe
   that this novel pronunciation was invented by my father."

   <gopher://gopher.adp.wisc.edu/00/.data/.news-rel/.9401/.940126a>.

   (1999-03-03)