Curry, Haskell Brooks

Haskell Brooks Curry, (born September 12, 1900, Millis, Massachusetts, U.S.—died September 1, 1982, State College, Pennsylvania), American mathematician and educator whose research in logic led to his theory of formal systems and processes as well as to the formulation of a logical calculus using inferential rules.

Curry graduated from Harvard University in 1920 and received postgraduate degrees from that institution (A.M., 1924) and the University of Göttingen (Ph.D., 1929). He served on the faculties of Harvard University (1926–27) and Princeton University (1927–28) before becoming assistant professor of mathematics at Pennsylvania State University in 1929, where he remained for more than 35 years.

During World War II Curry served as a mathematician at the Frankford Arsenal and as a researcher at the applied physics laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. In 1966 he became a professor of mathematics at the University of Amsterdam. He was the author of Combinatory Logic (1958; with Robert Feys), dealing with a system of formal logic that he developed in the 1930s, and Foundations of Mathematical Logic (1963), a widely used graduate school textbook.