Jack Silver

Jack Howard Silver ( born April 23, 1942 in Missoula, Montana ) is an American mathematician who is concerned with set theory.

Silver in 1966 his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley with Robert Vaught ( Some applications of model theory in set theory ). He was a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is now Professor Emeritus.

Silver reach substantial progress in the problem of singular cardinals. He solved the problem for more than cardinal numbers with cofinality. In particular, he proved that follows from the axioms of ZFC: Does the generalized continuum hypothesis, for each cardinal number less than, a singular cardinal of uncountable cofinality with (greater than), so it also applies to itself ( set of Silver ). That is, valid for all infinite cardinal numbers, then applies. The sentence was then surprising because almost all quantity theorists were convinced that the opposite would be consistent with ZFC (also Silver himself, as he noted in his lecture at the ICM in Vancouver ).

In 1974 he was invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Vancouver ( On the singular cardinals problem).

His doctoral include William Mitchell, Karel Prikry, Randall Dougherty.