Rohit Jivanlal Parikh

Rohit Jivanlal Parikh is an Indian-American mathematician, logician, computer scientist and philosopher known for his contributions to mathematical logic, recursion theory, proof theory, epistemic logic, game theory, formal languages, and social software. He has been a Distinguished Professor at Brooklyn College at the City University of New York (CUNY) (1982-2023).

Early life and education He completed his undergraduate studies at Harvard College, graduating magna cum laude with honors in physics in 1957. He earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard University in 1962 under the supervision of Hartley Rogers Jr and Burton Dreben.

Parikh has been affiliated with the fields of computer science, mathematics, and philosophy. Earlier in his career he taught at Panjab University in India during 1964–1965. His academic appointments include visiting and research positions at Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Laboratory for Computer Science, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, ETH Zurich, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, SUNY Buffalo, Panjab University, and Bristol University.

Parikh is also one of the founders of the Indian Conference on Logic and Applications (ICLA).

Research Parikh’s early work made contributions to recursion theory, proof theory, and formal languages. His interests expanded over time to include non-standard analysis, logic of programs, epistemic logic (logic of knowledge), belief revision, and game theory. Parikh is also recognized for advancing the interdisciplinary field of “social software,” which applies logical, computational, and game-theoretic techniques to analyze social procedures and algorithms such as elections, communication protocols, and decision-making systems.

Personal life and politics Rohit Parikh was married from 1968 to 1994 to Carol Parikh (née Geris), who is best known for her stories and biography of Oscar Zariski, The Unreal Life of Oscar Zariski.

Parikh is a nontheist opposing abortions. To fight abortions he joined the Atheist and Agnostic Pro-Life League.

Awards and recognition

Gibbs Prize, Bombay University, 1954 1956, 1957

Publications Existence and Feasibility in Arithmetic, Journal of Symbolic Logic 36 (1971) pages 494–508. On the Length of Proofs, Transactions of the American Mathematical Society 177 (1973) pages 29–36. (With M. Parnes) Conditional Probability can be Defined for Arbitrary Pairs of Sets of Reals, Advances in Mathematics 9 (1972) pages 520–522. (With D.H.J. de Jongh) Well Partial Orderings and Hierarchies, Proc. Kon. Ned. Akad. Sci Series A 80 (1977) pages 195–207. (With D. Kozen) An Elementary Completeness Proof for PDL Theoretical Computer Science 14 (1981) pages 113–118. The Problem of Vague Predicates, in Logic, Language and Method Ed. Cohen and Wartofsky, Reidel (1982) pages 241–261. Parikh, Rohit J. "On context-free languages." Journal of the ACM (JACM) 13.4 (1966): 570-581.