Nikolai Ivanovich Styazhkin (a brief sketch of his life and scientific work)

Abstract

The late Nikolai Ivanovich Stiazhkin was born in Astrakhan on 1 October 1932. He studied in the Philosophy Faculty of Moscow State University, where beginning in 1964 he taught a fundamental course on history of logic in the logic department of the philosophy faculty. He was a leading historian of logic who specialized in the history of logic in the nineteenth century, writing his Candidate's thesis on that topic under the direction of S. A. lanovskaia in 1959, and his doctoral thesis on The Development of the Idea of Mathematical Logic in 1964. The latter, published by „Nauka" Press in Moscow in 1964 appeared in translation in several languages; it is known in English under the title History of Mathematical Logic from Leibniz to Peano and was published by MIT Press in 1969.

The author outlines the contents of one Stiazhkin's most important writings in history of logic. A detailed survey is given of the contents of his book, published in 1967, little known outside the USSR, Formirovanie matematiceskoj logiki (The Formation of Mathematical Logic, which was reviewed by Jean van Heijenoort in the Journal of Symbolic Logic 33 (1968), p. 465). Stiazhkin's encyclopedic and detailed but nonjudgemental work traces the entire panorama of the history of logic, from ancient China and India through the modern development of mathematical logic in the algebraic work of the nineteenth century, and ends with Peano.

A list of Stiazhkin's scientific writings is appended.