Jon Michael Dunn

Jon Michael Dunn
Jon Michael Dunn
Born	June 19, 1941; Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.
Died	April 5, 2021 (aged 79)
Alma mater	-Oberlin College ; -University of Pittsburgh
Known for	-Algebraic semantics for relevance logic ; -4-valued semantics for first-degree entailment ; -Gaggles (generalized Galois logics) ; -Semantics of negation ; -Proof theory including solving (with K. Bimbó) the decidability of Ticket Entailment ; -Relation of quantum computation to quantum logic
Spouse	Sarah Jane Dunn (m. 1964)
Children	Jon William Butcher Dunn, Jennifer Anne Dunn
Awards	-National Merit Scholar (1959-63) ; -Andrew Mellon Fellow (1964-65) ; -Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellow (1965-66) ; -Fulbright Senior Research Scholar (1975-76) ; -American Council of Learned Societies Fellow (1984-85) ; -Who's Who in America (1985) ; -Techpoint Mira Award (2002) ; -Who's Who in the World (2005) ; -iSchools Bookends Award (2006) ; -Sagamore of the Wabash (2007) ; -Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2010)
	Scientific career
Fields	-Logic -Philosophy -Computer Science
Institutions	-Wayne State University -Indiana University Bloomington
Doctoral advisor	Nuel Belnap
Doctoral students	Katalin Bimbó
Website	-Jon Michael Dunn's Indiana University Philosophy Home Page; -Michael Dunn's Indiana University School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering Home Page

J. Michael Dunn (June 19, 1941 – April 5, 2021)^[1]^[2] was Oscar Ewing Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, professor emeritus of Informatics and Computer Science, was twice chair of the Philosophy Department, was Executive Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and was founding dean of the School of Informatics (now the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering) at Indiana University.

Early life and education

Dunn was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He went to high school in Lafayette, Indiana, where he worked in Purdue Biology laboratories after school and summers. He was the first in his family to go to college.

He obtained an A.B. in Philosophy from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. in philosophy (Logic) from the University of Pittsburgh, where he wrote his dissertation, The Algebra of Intensional Logics.^[3]

Career

He taught at Wayne State University and at Yale University before coming to Indiana University Bloomington in 1969, from which he retired in 2007.

He received grants from the NSF, NEH, ACLS, and was a visiting scholar at, among other places, the Australian National University, University of Oxford, and the University of Melbourne. In 2014 he was a visiting professor at his Ph.D. alma mater the University of Pittsburgh. In 2002, he accepted on behalf of the School of Informatics the Techpoint (Indiana Information Technology association) Mira for Outstanding Education Contribution to Information Technology. In 2007, he was awarded the Indiana University Bloomington Provost's Medal, and was made a Sagamore of the Wabash by the Governor of Indiana.

He was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as President of the Society for Exact Philosophy, and on the executive committee of the Association for Symbolic Logic. He was also an editor of the Journal of Symbolic Logic and chief editor of the Journal of Philosophical Logic. He published six books and over 100 papers, and directed or co-directed 17 Ph.D. dissertations (Philosophy, Computer Science, Mathematics).

After he retired, he served on the board of HealthLINC for ten years, the regional health information exchange, and was president there for three years. From 2010, he was affiliated with the Info-Metrics Institute, American University, and was a member of its advisory board (co-chair 2017–2021).

Work

Dunn's research focuses on information based logics, particularly relevance logics and other so-called "substructural" logics. He has an algebraic approach to these under the heading of "gaggle theory" (for generalized Galois logics), which he has developed in articles, his book with G. Hardgree Algebraic Methods in Philosophical Logic (Oxford, 2001),^[4] and a book with Katalin Bimbó, Generalized Galois Logics: Relational Semantics of Nonclassical Logical Calculi. (CSLI Publications, 2008).^[5]

He studied as a graduate student with the two major figures in relevance logic, Alan Ross Anderson and Nuel Belnap. He was a contributing author to their book Entailment: The Logic of Relevance and Entailment Vol. 1,^[6] and a full co-author with them to Vol. 2. ^[7]

He also worked on quantum logic and quantum computation, subjective probability in the context of incomplete and conflicting information, and with Katalin Bimbό proved the decidability of Ticket Entailment (a problem open since 1960).^[8] Dunn was honored in 2016 by the book J. Michael Dunn on Information Based Logic, edited by Katalin Bimbó, part of the Springer series Outstanding Contributions to Logic.^[9]^[10]

References

^ "Jon Michael "Mike" Dunn, 79". Bloomington Herald-Times. April 9, 2021. p. 2. Retrieved April 9, 2021.
^ Weinberg, Justin (April 7, 2021). "J. Michael Dunn (1941-2021)". Daily Nous. Retrieved April 11, 2021.
^ Dunn, Jon Michael (1966). The Algebra of Intensional Logics (PhD Thesis thesis). Dissertation. It was published in 2019 with an introductory essay by Katalin Bimbó as Volume 2 of the book series Logic PhDs, College Publications, London.
^ Dunn, J. Michael (2001). Algebraic methods in philosophical logic. Hardegree, Gary M. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198531923. OCLC 46240293.
^ Bimbó, Katalin (2008). Generalized Galois logics : relational semantics of nonclassical logical calculi. Dunn, J. Michael. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI Publications. ISBN 9781575865737. OCLC 225876030.
^ Ross., Anderson, Alan (1975–1992). Entailment : The Logic of Relevance and Necessity Vol. 1. Belnap, Nuel D., Dunn, J. Michael. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691071926. OCLC 1530367.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^ Ross., Anderson, Alan (1975–1992). Entailment : The Logic of Relevance and Necessity Vol. 2. Belnap, Nuel D., Dunn, J. Michael. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691071926. OCLC 1530367.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^ Dunn, J. Michael; Bimbó, Katalin (2012). "New Consecution Calculi for $R^{t}_{\to}$". Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic. 53 (4): 491–509. doi:10.1215/00294527-1722719. ISSN 0029-4527.
^ Hansson, Sven Ove. Outstanding Contributions to Logic. Springer.
^ Bimbó, Katalin, ed. (2016). J. Michael Dunn on Information Based Logics. Outstanding Contributions to Logic. Springer International Publishing. ISBN 978-3-319-29298-4. OCLC 945975273.