Math-Philosophy Alumnus Sean Walsh Wins Gödel Research Prize Fellowship

Sean Walsh, who graduated from the University of Notre Dame in January with a Ph.D. in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics, won one of five Kurt Gödel Research Prize Fellowships, two-year awards worth 100,000 Euros (about $140,000). Walsh’s project is titled“The Limits of Arithmetical Definability.” The fellowships honor the legacy of Gödel, a pioneering logician who was born in Austria and emigrated to the United States.

Walsh was the second graduate of the Ph.D. Program in Logic and the Foundations of Mathematics sponsored by the Department of Philosophy, where he worked with Michael Detlefsen, and the Department of Mathematics, where he worked with Peter Cholak. He was also a fellow in Detlefsen’s “Ideals of Proof” project and did research in Paris for a year. Walsh now is a postdoc in the Philosophy Department at Birkbeck College, University of London with Øystein Linnebo’s project “Plurals, Predicates, and Paradox.” He is co-organizing the University of Paris 7-Diderot Philosophy of Math Seminar.

It is believed that Kurt Gödel lectured at the University of Notre Dame in the 1930s, one of just a few universities in the United States where he gave a guest lecture. Walsh is pictured in front of the Senate House Library in London.

3/16/2011