View source for Larry Wos

{{Short description|American mathematician (1930–2020)}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name = Larry Wos
| birth_name        = Lawrence T. Wos
| birth_date        = 1930
| birth_place       = [[Chicago]]
| death_date        = {{death date|2020|08|21}}
| death_place       =
| thesis_title      = On Commutative Prime Power Subgroups of the Norm
| thesis_url        = https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/58680
| thesis_year       = 1957
| known_for         = [[Theorem proving]]
| awards            = [[Herbrand Award]] <small>(1992)</small>
}}
'''Lawrence T. Wos''' (1930–2020) was an American [[mathematician]], a researcher in the Mathematics and Computer Science Division of [[Argonne National Laboratory]].<ref>[http://www.mcs.anl.gov/~wos/ Larry Wos's home page] at Argonne, retrieved 2010-10-03.</ref>
==Biography==
Wos studied at the [[University of Chicago]], receiving a bachelor's degree in 1950 and a master's in mathematics in 1954, and went on for doctoral studies at the [[University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign]] where he received PhD in 1957 supervised by [[Reinhold Baer]].<ref>{{MathGenealogyProject|id=3951}}</ref> He joined [[Argonne National Laboratory|Argonne]] in 1957, and began using computers to prove mathematical theorems in 1963.<ref>{{citation|title=Top of his game|url=http://magazine.uchicago.edu/9704/9704Game.html|journal=University of Chicago Magazine|first=Tim Andrew|last=Obermiller|date=April 1997}}.</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Dick |first=Stephanie |date= September 2011 |title=AfterMath: The Work of Proof in the Age of Human–Machine Collaboration|jstor= 10.1086/661623|journal= Isis |publisher= University of Chicago Press|volume= 102 |issue= 3 |pages= 494–505|doi= 10.1086/661623|pmid=22073773 |s2cid=24778586 }}</ref>
Wos was congenitally [[blindness|blind]]. He was an avid [[bowling|bowler]], the best male blind bowler in the US.<ref name="tohg"/><ref>{{citation|title=Blindness took back seat on road to success|journal=[[Chicago Tribune]]|first=Jon|last=Van|date=January 24, 1982}}.</ref><ref>{{citation|title=Blind Mathematician Applies Analytical Method to Bowling|first=Paul L.|last=Montgomery|journal=[[New York Times]]|date=May 27, 1977}}.</ref>
==Awards and honors==
In 1982, Wos and his colleague Steve Winker were the first to win the Automated Theorem Proving Prize, given by the [[American Mathematical Society]].<ref name="tohg">''Chicago Tribune'', November 18, 1982.</ref>
In 1992, Wos was the first to win the [[Herbrand Award]] for his contributions to the field of [[automated deduction]].<ref>{{citation |title=Automated deduction, CADE-11: 11th International Conference on Automated Deduction |author=Deepak Kapur |year=1992}}</ref> A [[festschrift]] in his honor, ''Automated reasoning and its applications: essays in honor of Larry Wos'' (Robert Veroff, ed.) was published by the [[MIT Press]] in 1997 ({{ISBN|0-262-22055-5}}).
==Books==
Wos and Gail W. Pieper are the coauthors of the books ''A Fascinating Country in the World of Computing: Your Guide to Automated Reasoning'' (World Scientific, 1999, {{ISBN|978-981-02-3910-7}}) and ''Automated Reasoning and the Discovery of Missing and Elegant Proofs'' (Rinton Press, 2003, {{ISBN|1-58949-023-1}}). Wos's collected works were published by World Scientific in 2000, in two volumes ({{ISBN|978-981-02-4001-1}}).
==References==
{{reflist}}
==External links==
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20100118055200/http://dblp.uni-trier.de/db/indices/a-tree/w/Wos:Larry.html Publication list at DBLP]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20200925213925/http://aarinc.org/Newsletters/132-2020-09.html#larrywos Maria Paola Bonacina (with Franz Baader, Alan Bundy, Ulrich Furbach, Frank Pfenning, John Slaney, and Christoph Weidenbach), "In Memoriam: Larry Wos"]
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[[Category:American scientists with disabilities]]
[[Category:Academics from Chicago]]
[[Category:20th-century American mathematicians]]
[[Category:21st-century American mathematicians]]
[[Category:University of Chicago alumni]]
[[Category:University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni]]
[[Category:1930 births]]
[[Category:2020 deaths]]
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