Raymond Smullyan

Raymond Merrill Smullyan (ˈsmʌliən; May 25, 1919 – February 6, 2017) was an American mathematician, magician, concert pianist, logician, Taoist, and philosopher. Born in Far Rockaway, New York, his first career was stage magic. He earned a BSc from the University of Chicago in 1955 and his PhD from Princeton University in 1959. He is one of many logicians to have studied with Alonzo Church. He was born on May 25, 1919, in Far Rockaway, Queens, New York, to an Ashkenazi Jewish family. His father was Isidore Smullyan, a Russian-born businessman who emigrated to Belgium when young and graduated from the University of Antwerp, his native language being French. His mother was Rosina Smullyan (née Freeman), a painter and actress born and raised in London. Both parents were musical, his father playing the violin and his mother playing the piano. He was the youngest of three children. His eldest brother, Emile Benoit Smullyan, later became an economist under the name of Emile Benoit. His sister was Gladys Smullyan, later Gladys Gwynn. His cousin was the philosopher Arthur Francis Smullyan (1912-1998). In Far Rockaway he was a grade school classmate of Richard Feynman. Smullyan showed musical talent from a young age, playing both violin and piano. He studied with pianist Grace Hofheimer in New York. He had perfect pitch. He started his interest in logic at the age of 5. In 1931 he won a gold medal in the piano competition of the New York Music Week Association when he was aged 12 (the previous year he had won the silver medal). After graduating from grade school, the Depression forced his family to move to Manhattan, and he attended Theodore Roosevelt High School in The Bronx. He played violin in the school orchestra but devoted more time to playing the piano. At high school he fell in love with mathematics when he took a class in geometry. Apart from his classes in geometry, physics, and chemistry, however, he was dissatisfied with his high school, and dropped out.

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