Association for Symbolic Logic

Abstract

J. Richard Büchi (1924–1984)* was born January 31, 1924, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, a citizen of Zell, Switzerland. He received his Doctorat in Mathematics at the E.T.H., Zürich, 1948, under Paul Bernays, and then moved to the United States. For several years he worked at the University of Michigan, as an instructor and then as the cofounder of the Logic of Computers Group with J.B. Wright, C.C. Elgot, R. McNaughton, H. Wang, and others. In 1958 he married Sylvia Duncan Hall. He held positions at the University of Illinois, Notre Dame University, the University of Mainz in Germany as a Fulbright Lecturer, and at Ohio State University. In 1963 he was appointed Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Purdue University. He was the first logician there, and built up a significant group in mathematical logic and theoretical computer sciences; among his colleagues were Paul Young, Jean Rubin, John Doner, Michael Machtey, and Leonard Lipshitz. He also drew a number of visitors from different countries and had 10 Ph.D. students in both fields, mathematics and computer science.