Ken Kunen, a mathematicianʼs mathematician

Ken Kunen: Algebraist

Ken Kunen is justifiably best known for his work in set theory and topology. What I would guess many of his friends and students in those areas do not know is that Ken also did important work in algebra, especially in quasigroup and loop theory. In fact, I think it is not an exaggeration to say that his work in loop theory, both alone and in collaboration, revolutionized the field. In this pape...

A Mathematician Reads

New York University mathematical physicist Alan Sokal published in the postmodern humanities journal Social Text a parody entitled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” [1]. His point in doing so was to test whether the field of “cultural studies of science” was seriously lacking in “intellectual standards”. His article is nonsense from start to...

The mathematician as a formalist

Kunen and set theory

Kenneth Kunen (1943–) figured principally in the development of set theory in all the major directions, this during a formative period for the subject when it was transmuting to a sophisticated field of mathematics. In fact, several of Kunen’s results and proofs still frame modern set theory or serve as standards to be reckoned with in its further progress. This is all the more notable as much ...

Ken Cheng

Ken Cheng was born in Hong Kong. His family emigrated to Toronto, Canada while he was still young, and he attended high school in Toronto, and then the University of Toronto. He has a M.Ed. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, USA in 1984. He did postdoctoral work at the University of Sussex and at the University of Western Ontario before beco...