Haskell Curry

Haskell Brooks Curry (September 12, 1900 – September 1, 1982) was an American mathematician and computer scientist. Curry is best known for his work in combinatory logic, significantly developing the field initiated by Moses Schönfinkel. He is also recognized for Curry's paradox and the Curry–Howard correspondence. The programming languages Haskell and Curry, along with the concept of 'currying,' are named after him. Curry's academic journey included Harvard University, MIT, and the University of Göttingen, where he earned his Ph.D. under David Hilbert. He taught at Pennsylvania State University for 37 years, with leaves for wartime applied mathematics and work on the ENIAC project. Despite encountering paradoxes like the Kleene–Rosser paradox, Curry persisted in developing combinatory logic as a foundation for mathematics. His work laid groundwork for functional programming. Curry also contributed to early high-level programming language descriptions and algorithmic methods like gradient descent.