Alfred Tarski, the Polish-American mathematician and logician, was born in Warsaw, received his doctorate in mathematics from the University of Warsaw in 1924, and two years later was named docent. In 1939 he emigrated to the United States. Appointed lecturer in mathematics at the University of California (Berkeley) in 1942, he remained at that institution for the rest of his life, serving as professor of mathematics from 1946 and becoming professor emeritus in 1968.

Mathematics

Tarski worked in both pure mathematics, especially set theory and algebra, and mathematical logic, especially metamathematics. This entry will not discuss his mathematical contributions, although some of them (in particular his famous theorem, established jointly with Stefan Banach, on the decomposition of the sphere, as well as his theory of inaccessible cardinals) have a definite bearing on the epistemology of mathematics. (See S. Banach and A. Tarski, "Sur la décomposition des ensembles des...