Jean van Heijenoort
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Born
| Jean Louis Maxime van Heijenoort
(
1912-07-23
)
July 23, 1912
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Died
| March 29, 1986
(1986-03-29)
(aged 73)
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Alma mater
| New York University
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Jean Louis Maxime van Heijenoort
(
French:
[van
?j?n??t]
; July 23, 1912 ? March 29, 1986) was a historian of
mathematical logic
. He was also a personal secretary to
Leon Trotsky
from 1932 to 1939, and an American
Trotskyist
until 1947.
Life
[
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]
Van Heijenoort was born in Creil, France. His parents had immigrated from the Netherlands before his birth. When van Heijenoort was only two years old, his father passed away, leaving his family in financial hardship. Despite these challenges, he pursued his education and became proficient in French. Throughout his life, he maintained strong connections with his extended family and friends in France, making biannual visits after he obtained American citizenship in 1958.
Political views
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]
In 1932, van Heijenoort was recruited by
Yvan Craipeau
to join the
Trotskyist
movement. He joined the
Communist League
in the same year. After
Trotsky
was exiled, he hired van Heijenoort as a
secretary
and bodyguard, primarily because of his fluency in French,
Russian
, German, and English. Van Heijenoort spent seven years in Trotsky's household, during which he served as a translator, helped Trotsky write several books and carried on an extensive intellectual and political correspondence in several languages.
In 1939, van Heijenoort moved to
New York City
to be with his second wife, Beatrice "Bunny" Guyer. He was not involved in the circumstances leading to Trotsky's murder in 1940. In
New York
, he worked for the
Socialist Workers Party (US)
(SWP) and wrote a number of articles for the American Trotskyist press and other
radical
outlets. He was elected to the secretariat of the
Fourth International
in 1940 but resigned when
Felix Morrow
and
Albert Goldman
, with whom he had sided, were expelled from the SWP. (Goldman subsequently joined the
US Workers Party
while Morrow did not join any other party or grouping.) In 1947, van Heijenoort too was expelled from the SWP. In 1948, he published an article, entitled
"A Century's Balance Sheet"
, in which he criticized that part of
Marxism
which saw the "proletariat" as the revolutionary class. He continued to hold other parts of Marxism as true.
Van Heijenoort was spared the ordeal of
McCarthyism
as everything he published in Trotskyist publications appeared under one of over a dozen pen names he used. According to Feferman (1993), Van Heijenoort the logician was quite reserved about his Trotskyist youth, and did not discuss politics. Nevertheless, he contributed to the Trotskyist movement until the last decade of his life, when he wrote his monograph
With Trotsky in Exile
(1978), and an edition of Trotsky's correspondence (1980). He advised and collaborated with the archivists at the
Houghton Library
in
Harvard University
, which holds many of Trotsky's papers from his years in exile.
Academic work
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]
After completing a Ph.D. in
mathematics
at
New York University
in 1949 under the supervision of
J. J. Stoker
, Van Heijenoort began to teach mathematics at New York University, but moved to
logic
and
philosophy of mathematics
, largely under the influence of
Georg Kreisel
. He started teaching philosophy, first part-time at
Columbia University
, then full-time at
Brandeis University
from 1965 to 1977.
He spent much of his last decade at
Stanford University
, writing and editing eight books, including parts of the
Collected Works
of
Kurt Godel
.
From Frege to Godel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic
(1967) is an anthology of translations on the
history of logic
and the
foundations of mathematics
. It begins with the first complete translation of
Frege
's 1879
Begriffsschrift
,
followed by 45 short pieces on
mathematical logic
and
axiomatic set theory
, originally published between 1889 and 1931. The anthology ends with
Godel
's landmark paper on the
incompleteness of Peano arithmetic
.
Nearly all the content of
From Frege to Godel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic
had only been available in a few North American university libraries (e.g., even the
Library of Congress
did not acquire a copy of the
Begriffsschrift
until 1964), and all but four pieces had to be translated from one of six continental European languages. When possible, the authors of the original texts reviewed the translations, and suggested corrections and amendments. Each piece was supplied with editorial footnotes and an introduction (mostly by Van Heijenoort but some by
Willard Quine
and
Burton Dreben
); its references were combined into a comprehensive bibliography, and misprints, inconsistencies, and errors were corrected.
From Frege to Godel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic
contributed to advancing the view that modern logic begins with, and builds on, the
Begriffsschrift
. Grattan-Guinness (2000) argues that this perspective on the history of logic is mistaken, because Frege employed an idiosyncratic notation and was significantly less read than
Peano
. Ironically, van Heijenoort (1967) is often cited by those who prefer the alternative
model theoretic
stance on logic and mathematics. Much of the history of that stance, whose leading lights include
George Boole
,
Charles Sanders Peirce
,
Ernst Schroder
,
Leopold Lowenheim
,
Thoralf Skolem
,
Alfred Tarski
, and
Jaakko Hintikka
, is covered in Brady (2000).
From Frege to Godel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic
underrated the
algebraic logic
of
De Morgan
, Boole, Peirce, and Schroder, but devoted more pages to Skolem than to anyone other than Frege, and included Lowenheim (1915), the founding paper on model theory.
Personal life
[
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]
Van Heijenoort had children with two of his four wives. While living with Trotsky in
Coyoacan
, van Heijenoort's first wife left him after an argument with Trotsky's spouse. In 1986, he visited his estranged fourth wife, Anne-Marie Zamora, in
Mexico City
where she murdered him
before taking her own life.
Van Heijenoort was also one of
Frida Kahlo
's lovers; in the film
Frida
, he is played by Felipe Fulop.
Selected works
[
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]
- van Heijenoort, Jean (1967). "Logic as Language and Logic as Calculus".
Synthese
.
17
(3): 324?330.
doi
:
10.1007/BF00485036
.
JSTOR
20114564
.
S2CID
46978612
.
- van Heijenoort, Jean (1978).
With Trotsky in Exile: From "Prinkipo" to "Coyoacan"
. Harvard University Press.
- van Heijenoort, Jean (1985).
Selected Essays
. Naples: Bibliopolis.
Books which Van Heijenoort edited alone or with others:
- van Heijenoort, Jean (1977) [reprinted with corrections, first published in 1967].
From Frege to Godel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879?1931
. Harvard University Press.
- Godel, Kurt
(1986).
Collected Works
. Vol. I. Oxford University Press.
- Godel, Kurt
(1990).
Collected Works
. Vol. II. Oxford University Press.
- Herbrand, Jacques
(1968).
Ecrits Logiques
(in French). Presses Universitaires de France.
- Trotsky, Leon
;
Trotsky, Natalia
(1980).
Correspondance 1933-38
(in French). Paris: Gallimard.
References
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Bibliography
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External links
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