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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Leon Henkin the Reviewer

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In this chapter, we intend to look at Henkin’s reviews, a total of forty-six. The books and papers reviewed deal with a large variety of subjects that range from the algebraic treatment of logical systems to issues concerning the philosophy of mathematics and, not surprisingly—given his active work in mathematical education—one on the teaching of this subject. Most of them were published in The Journal of Symbolic Logic and only one in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society. We will start by sorting these works into subjects and continue by providing a brief summary of each of them in order to point out those aspects that are originally from Henkin, and what we take to be mistakes. This analysis should disclose Henkin’s personal views on some of the most important results and influential books of his time; for instance, Godel’s discovery of the consistency of the Continuum Hypothesis with the axioms of set theory or Church’s Introduction to Logic. It should also provide insight into how various outstanding results in logic and the foundations of mathematics were seen at the time. Finally, we will relate Henkin’s reviews to Henkin’s major contributions.