Piergiorgio Odifreddi

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Piergiorgio Odifreddi (2012)

Piergiorgio Odifreddi (born July 13, 1950 in Cuneo), is an Italian mathematician, logician and aficionado of the history of science, who is also extremely active as a popular science writer and essayist, especially in a perspective of philosophical atheism as a member of the Italian Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics. He's philosophically and politically near to Bertrand Russell and Noam Chomsky.

Born in Cuneo (Piedmont), he received his Laurea in mathematics in Turin in 1973. From 1983 to 2002, he taught in both Italy (Turin, Alessandria, Siena, Milan) and in the United States (Cornell University). Since 2001, he has been a professor of mathematical logic in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Turin.

He has written editorials and books reviews for La rivista dei libri (the Italian edition of the New York Review of Books), is a regular contributor to Le Scienze (the Italian edition of Scientific American), and has also written for several newspapers such as La Repubblica, La Stampa and the weekly L'Espresso. The television stations Radio Tre, RAI Due and RAI Tre have hosted many of his discussions on various scientific topics.

Piergiorgio Odifreddi participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions project in 2007.

Honors

• 1998 – Galileo Prize of the Italian Mathematical Union.
• 2002 – Peano Prize of Mathesis
• 2005 – Commander OMRI

Works

Academic writings

• Classical recursion Theory, North Holland – Elsevier, 1988, ISBN 9780080886596; 2nd edn. 1992, ISBN 0-444-89483-7
• Classical recursion Theory. Volume II, North Holland – Elsevier, 1999

Popular writings

• Il Vangelo secondo la Scienza, Einaudi, 1999, ISBN 88-06-14930-X (The Gospel According to Science)
• La matematica del Novecento, prefazione di Gian-Carlo Rota, Einaudi, 2000, ISBN 88-06-15153-3 (The Mathematics of the 20th Century)
  • The Mathematical Century: The 30 greatest problems of the last 100 years, translated by Arturo Sangalli, forward by Freeman Dyson, 2004, Princeton University Press ISBN 0-691-09294-X
• Il computer di Dio, Cortina, 2000, ISBN 88-7078-663-3 (God's Computer)
• C'era una volta un paradosso, Einaudi, 2001, ISBN 88-06-15090-1 (Once upon a time there was a paradox)
• La repubblica dei numeri, Cortina, 2002, ISBN 88-7078-776-1 (The Republic of Numbers)
• Zichicche, Dedalo, 2003, ISBN 88-220-6260-4
• Il diavolo in cattedra. La logica matematica da Aristotele a Kurt Gödel, Einaudi, 2003, ISBN 88-06-16721-9 (The Devil in the Professor's Chair: Mathematical Logic from Aristotle to Kurt Goedel)
• Divertimento geometrico – Da Euclide ad David Hilbert, Bollati Boringhieri, 2003, ISBN 88-339-5714-4 (Geometric Diversions – From Euclid to Hilbert)
• Le menzogne di Ulisse. L'avventura della logica da Parmenide ad Amartya Sen, Longanesi, 2004, ISBN 88-304-2044-1 (Ulysses' Lies. The Adventure of Logic from Parmenides to Amartya Sen)
• Il matematico impertinente, Longanesi, 2005, ISBN 88-304-2222-3 (The Impertinent Mathematician)
• Penna, pennello, bacchetta: le tre invidie del matematico, Laterza, 2005, ISBN 88-420-7643-0 (Pen, brush, baton: the three envies of the mathematician)
• Idee per diventare matematico, Zanichelli, 2005, ISBN 88-08-07063-8 (Ideas for becoming a mathematician)
• Incontri con menti straordinarie, Longanesi, 2006, ISBN 88-304-2346-7 (Meetings with extraordinary minds)
• Che cos'è la logica?, Luca Sossella editore, 2006, ISBN 88-89829-19-2 (What is logic?)
• La scienza espresso: Note brevi, semibrevi e minime per una biblioteca scientifica universale, Einaudi, 2006, ISBN 978-88-06-18258-8 (Science express)
• Perché non-possiamo essere cristiani (e meno che mai cattolici), Longanesi, 2007, ISBN 978-88-304-2427-2 (Why we cannot be Christians (much less Catholics))

External links

• Piergiorgio Odifreddi's Official Site (IT)
• Article by Odifreddi on Recursive Functions in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy