Legacy of Kurt Schütte

This book on proof theory centers around the legacy of Kurt Schütte and its current impact on thesubject. Schütte was the last doctoral student of David Hilbert who was the first to see that proofscan be viewed as structured mathematical objects amenable to investigation by mathematical methods (metamathematics). Schütte inaugurated the important paradigm shift from finite proofs toinfinite proofs and developed the mathematical tools for their analysis. Infinitary proof theoryflourished in his hands in the 1960s, culminating in the famous bound?0for the limit of predicativemathematics (a fame shared with Feferman). Later his interests shifted to developing infinite proofcalculi for impredicative theories. Schütte had a keen interest in advancing ordinal analysis to everstronger theories and was still working on some of the strongest systems in his eighties. The articlesin this volume from leading experts closeto his research, show the enduring influence of his work inmodern proof theory. They range from eye witness accounts of his scientific life to developments atthe current research frontier, including papers by Schütte himself that have never been publishedbefore.