Computability And Logic

This book presents a set of historical recollections on the work of Martin Davis and his role in advancing our understanding of the connections between logic, computing, and unsolvability. The individual contributions touch on most of the core aspects of Davis’ work and set it in a contemporary context. They analyse, discuss and develop many of the ideas and concepts that Davis put forward, including such issues as contemporary satisfiability solvers, essential unification, quantum computing and generalisations of Hilbert’s tenth problem.

This is a book about computation, something which is ubiquitous in the modern world. More precisely, it examines computability theory and computational complexity theory. Computability theory is the part of mathematics and computer science which seeks to clarify what we mean by computation or algorithm. When is there a computational solution possible to some question? How can we show that none is possible? How computationally hard is the question we are concerned with? Arguably, this area lead to the development of digital computers. (Computational) complexity theory is an intellectual heir of computability theory. Complexity theory is concerned with understanding what resources are needed for computation, where typically we would measure the resources in terms of time and space. Can we perform some task in a feasible number of steps? Can we perform some algorithm with only a limited memory? Does randomness help? Are there standard approaches to overcoming computational difficulty?

This Festschrift is published in honor of Rodney G. Downey, eminent logician and computer scientist, surfer and Scottish country dancer, on the occasion of his 60th birthday.

This Festschrift is published in honor of Rodney G. Downey, eminent logician and computer scientist, surfer and Scottish country dancer, on the occasion of his 60th birthday.

This Festschrift is published in honor of Rodney G. Downey, eminent logician and computer scientist, surfer and Scottish country dancer, on the occasion of his 60th birthday.