Anil Nerode Awarded Honorary Degree from University of Chicago

Professor Anil Nerode, Goldwin Smith Professor in the Department of Mathematics, received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from his alma mater, the University of Chicago, at its June 12, 2010 convocation ceremony. The degree was presented by his former student, Robert I. Soare, Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor in Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of Chicago, with the following introduction:

Anil Nerode is one of the foremost experts on mathematical logic and the theory of computability. One might place him in the tradition of Leibniz, with a scope of all of mathematics and a goal to understand computability and effective processes in all forms, theoretical and practical. With his A.B. and Ph.D. degrees from the era of Robert Hutchins and Marshall Harvey Stone, Nerode carried the resulting intellectual and mathematical traditions with him when he left Chicago in the 1950s, a time when the fields of mathematical logic, computability, and automata theory were in their infancy. In the subsequent decades he has done more than anyone else to bring these fields to their present state, through the power of his mathematical knowledge and his unique vision. Through his research and his mathematical descendants, Nerode has had and will continue to have a profound influence on mathematical logic and computability.

The official citation for the degree reads as follows:

For over a half century, Anil Nerode has been a pioneer in mathematical logic, computability, automata theory, and the understanding of computable processes both theoretical and practical. His work comes from a venerable and distinguished mathematical tradition combined with the newest developments in computing and technology.

While honorary degrees at Chicago are awarded primarily for scholarly achievement and impact, Nerode has had an extremely productive career in service to Cornell, various professional organizations, government and industry as well. He has served on a wide variety of College and University committees as well as ones for several professional organizations, other universities and government agencies. Nerode has also consulted for more than 25 organizations, including the Institute for Defense Analysis, Institute for Naval Studies, IBM, Schlumberger, the National Science Foundation, and Argonne National Laboratory. He also has served as editor of some fifteen journals, among them the Journal of Symbolic Logic, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic, Documenta Mathematica, Future Generation Computing, and Computer Modeling and Simulation.

In the realm of practical applications, Nerode was a cofounder of Clearsight Systems Inc. and a co-inventor of the hybrid systems, mathematical foundations and computational technologies that they employ for real-time implementation of reactive, intelligent, distributed controllers. He is currently working on a wide variety of applications of the mathematics he has been developing and has a number of exciting patents in the works.

Last modified:November 2, 2010