1923 – 1987
John Myhill (1923–1987) was an American mathematician, logician, and philosopher who made foundational contributions to recursion theory, formal language theory, and constructive mathematics. He is best known for the Myhill-Nerode theorem in automata theory and for developing constructive set theory (CST), and he also engaged with philosophical questions concerning language, meaning, and the learnability of grammar. He spent much of his career at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Co-developed the Myhill-Nerode theorem characterizing regular languages via equivalence classes
Proved foundational results on creative and productive sets in recursion theory
Developed Constructive Set Theory (CST), a formal system for intuitionistic mathematics
Contributed to philosophy of language, including analysis of propositional denotation and sentence meaning
Worked on the learnability of formal grammars, engaging with Gold-style language acquisition theory