Alonzo Church (logician)

Alonzo Church was a pioneering American logician and mathematician known for developing formal systems that underpin computer science. He introduced lambda calculus, a mathematical framework for expressing computation and functions, which helps understand how programming languages work. Church also contributed to foundational work in logic and the philosophy of math, notably formulating the Church-Turing thesis, which explores the limits of what computers can do. His ideas laid the groundwork for modern computer science, influencing how we think about algorithms, computation, and programming.