The Legacy of Kurt Schtte

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