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Haskell Curry
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== Life == Curry was born on {{Birth date|1900|09|12}} in [[Millis, Massachusetts]], to [[Samuel Silas Curry]] and [[Anna Baright Curry]], who ran a school for [[elocution]]. He entered [[Harvard University]] in 1916 to study medicine but switched to mathematics before graduating in 1920. After two years of graduate work in [[electrical engineering]] at [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] (MIT), he returned to Harvard to study [[physics]], earning a [[Master of Arts]] (M.A.) in 1924. Curry's interest in mathematical logic began during this period when he was introduced to the [[Principia Mathematica]], the attempt by [[Alfred North Whitehead]] and [[Bertrand Russell]] to ground mathematics in symbolic logic. Remaining at Harvard, Curry pursued a [[Doctor of Philosophy]] (Ph.D.) in mathematics. While he was directed by [[George David Birkhoff]] to work on [[differential equation]]s, his interests continued to shift to logic. In 1927, while an instructor at [[Princeton University]], he discovered the work of [[Moses Schönfinkel]] in combinatory logic. Schönfinkel's work had anticipated much of Curry's own research, and as a consequence, he moved to [[University of Göttingen]] where he could work with [[Heinrich Behmann]] and [[Paul Bernays]], who were familiar with Schönfinkel's work. Curry was supervised by [[David Hilbert]] and worked closely with Bernays, receiving a Ph.D. in 1930 with a dissertation on combinatory logic.{{sfn|Seldin|2008}} In 1928, before leaving for Göttingen, Curry married Mary Virginia Wheatley. The couple lived in Germany while Curry completed his dissertation, then, in 1929, moved to [[State College, Pennsylvania]] where Curry accepted a position at [[Pennsylvania State University|Pennsylvania State College]]. They had two children, Anne Wright Curry (July 27, 1930) and Robert Wheatley Curry (July 6, 1934). Curry remained at Penn State for the next 37 years. He spent one year at [[University of Chicago]] in 1931–1932 under a [[National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine#Program units|National Research Fellowship]] and one year in 1938–1939 at the [[Institute for Advanced Study]] in Princeton. In 1942 he took a leave of absence to do applied mathematics for the United States government during [[World War II]], notably at the [[Frankford Arsenal]]. Immediately after the war he worked on the [[ENIAC]] project, in 1945 and 1946. Under a [[Fulbright Program|Fulbright fellowship]], he collaborated with [[Robert Feys]] in [[Leuven|Louvain]], Belgium. After retiring from Penn State in 1966, Curry accepted a position at the [[University of Amsterdam]]. In 1970, after finishing the second volume of his treatise on the combinatory logic, Curry retired from the University of Amsterdam and returned to State College, Pennsylvania. Haskell Curry died on {{Death date and age|1982|09|01|1900|09|12}}, in State College, Pennsylvania.
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