Andreas Blass

Andreas R. Blass
Prof. Andreas Blass giving a talk during the conference "Boise Extravaganza in Set Theory BEST 17", Boise, Idaho, March 2008
Born	October 27, 1947 Nuremberg
Residence	Ann Arbor, Michigan
Nationality	United States
Fields	Mathematician
Institutions	University of Michigan
Doctoral advisor	Frank Wattenberg
Known for	set theory, mathematical logic, theoretical computer science.

Andreas Raphael Blass (born October 27, 1947 in Nuremberg) is a mathematician, currently a professor at the University of Michigan. He specializes in mathematical logic, particularly set theory, and theoretical computer science.

Blass graduated from the University of Detroit, where he was a Putnam Fellow, in 1966 with a B.S. in physics. He received his Ph.D. in 1970 from Harvard University, with a thesis on Orderings of Ultrafilters written under the supervision of Frank Wattenberg.^[1] Since 1970 he has been employed by the University of Michigan, first as a T.H. Hildebrandt Research Instructor (1970–72), then assistant professor (1972–76), associate professor (1976–84) and since 1984 he has been a full professor there.

In 2014, he became a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society.^[2]

Selected publications and results

In 1984 Blass proved that the existence of a basis for every vector space is equivalent to the Axiom of Choice. He made important contributions in the development of the set theory of the reals and forcing.

Blass was the first to point out connections between game semantics and linear logic.

He has authored about 175 research articles in mathematical logic and theoretical computer science, including:

• Blass, Andreas (1984). "Existence of bases implies the axiom of choice". Axiomatic set theory, Proc. AMS-IMS-SIAM Jt. Summer Res. Conf., Boulder/Colo. 1983, Contemp. Math. 31. pp. 31–34.
• Blass, Andreas; Shelah, Saharon (1987). "There may be simple $P_{\aleph_1}$- and $P_{\aleph_2}$-points and the Rudin-Keisler ordering may be downward directed". Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 33: 213–243. doi:10.1016/0168-0072(87)90082-0. delete character in |title= at position 21 (help)
• Blass, Andreas (1992). "A game semantics for linear logic". Annals of Pure and Applied Logic 56: 183–220. doi:10.1016/0168-0072(92)90073-9.
• Blass, Andreas; Gurevich, Yuri (2003). "Algorithms: a quest for absolute definitions" (PDF). Bull. Eur. Assoc. Theor. Comput. Sci. EATCS 81: 195–225. Retrieved 2008-04-28.

References

1. Andreas Blass at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
2. List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society

External links

• Blass's page at UM