Alex Wilkie

Alex Wilkie, actually Alec James Wilkie, ( born 1948 in Northampton ) is a British mathematical logician who deals with mathematical logic and model theory.

Wilkie was educated at University College London ( Bachelor 1969) and at the University of London, in 1970 where he made ​​his master's degree in mathematical logic and in 1973 at Bedford College at Wilfrid Hodges received his doctorate ( Models of Number Theory). 1972/73 he was a lecturer at the University of Leicester, then to 1978 Research Fellow at the Open University before he went to Oxford University as a Junior Lecturer. 1980/81 he was Assistant Professor at Yale University and in 1982 at the University of Paris VII After that, he was at the University of Manchester in 1986 and Reader in mathematical logic at Oxford, succeeding Robin Gandy. In 2007 he went to the Fielden Chair of Pure Mathematics at the University of Manchester.

He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2001, after the eulogy especially for finiteness results for defined by the exponential quantities, which he combined differential-geometric methods with such logic. His results also had applications in the theory of Lie groups.

In 1980, he sparked " Tarski's high school algebra problem." This asks if there are identities with multiplication, addition, exponentiation, consisting of eleven ( already by Richard Dedekind formulated ) basic axioms of "high school" math can not be derived. Wilkie found such elementary be formulated with these axioms of elementary mathematics but unprovable statements.

In 1993 he received the Karp Prize for his proof of the model-theoretic completeness of the field of real numbers with the exponential function. In 1986 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Berkeley (On axiomatizing arithmetic schemes ) and 1998 on the ICM in Berlin (O- Minimality ).

He is since 2007 the Council of the London Mathematical Society and in 2006 was Vice President of the Association for Symbolic Logic. In 1993 he held the Tarski Lectures.

He is married and has two children.