New book series: PhD dissertations in logic

College Publications is now launching a new series potentially of great interest to M-Phi’ers at large: Logic PhDs. The goal of the series is to publish historically important doctoral theses as well as remarkable recent ones, but for now the planned volumes are all historical landmarks:

Christine Ladd-Franklin, 1882, The Johns Hopkins University

On the Algebra of Logic

PhD advisor: Charles Peirce

Volume prepared by Irving Anellis (Indiana University and Peirce Edition Project, USA)

Haskell Curry, 1930, University of Göttingen

Grundlagen der kombinatorischen Logik (Foundations of Combinatory logic)

PhD advisor: David Hilbert

Volume prepared by Jonathan Seldin (University of Lethbridge, Canada)

Gerhard Gentzen, 1933, University of Göttingen

Untersuchungen über das logische Schließen (Researches on Logical Deduction)

PhD advisor: Paul Bernays

Volume prepared by Jan von Plato (University of Helsinki, Finland)

Saunders Mac Lane, 1934, University of Göttingen

Abgekürzte Beweise im Logikkalkul (Abbreviated Proofs in the Logical Calculus)

PhD advisors: Hermann Weyl and Paul Bernays

Volume prepared by Peter Arndt (University of Regensburg, Germany)

Jean Porte, 1965, University of Paris

Recherches sur la Théorie Générale des Systèmes Formels et sur les Systèmes Connectifs

(Researches in the General Theory of Formal Systems and in Connectives Systems)

PhD advisor: René de Possel

Volume prepared by Marcel Guillaume (University of Clermont-Ferrand, France)

Hans Kamp, 1968, UCLA

Tense Logic and the Theory of Linear Order

PhD advisor: Richard Montague

Volume prepared by Alexander Rabinowitz, (Tel Aviv University, Israel)

Krister Segerberg, 1971, Stanford University

An Essay in Classical Modal Logic

PhD advisor: Dana Scott

Volume prepared by Patrick Blackburn (University of Roskilde, Denmark)

Jean-Yves Béziau, the series editor, informs me that volumes are already planned for the doctoral theses of Alfred Tarski, Emil Post, Paul Bernays, John von Neumann, Jacques Herbrand, Kurt Gödel, Stephen Kleene, Roland Fraïsse, Nuel Belnap, Jon Michael Dunn, Dov Gabbay, Johan van Benthem.

This seems like a great initiative, which will greatly facilitate the study of the history of logic. Many important results were first proved in doctoral dissertations (Gentzen and Gödel spring to mind, but there are many others), so it makes good sense to make these texts more readily available (those not originally in English will be translated). Moreover, each volume will contain an extensive presentation of the author and his/her work and the historical context, as well as further developments inspired by the work in question. (And last but not least, College Publications is a non-profit publisher with the mission of publishing high-quality books at reasonable prices, including those in this series.)

The series is open to further suggestions, so if readers have ideas of other doctoral dissertation meriting to be included, please speak up in comments. (I am very glad to see Ladd-Franklin's dissertation as one of the volumes in preparation, but it would be great if the series could publish many more female authors as well.)