Giuseppe Longo

Giuseppe Longo is an Italian mathematician, epistemologist, theoretical biologist, author, and academic. He is the Research Director Emeritus at Centre national de la recherche scientifique at the Cavaillès interdisciplinary center of École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris.[1]

Giuseppe Longo
Born (1947-07-23) July 23, 1947
Rome, Italy
NationalityItalian
Occupation(s)Mathematician, epistemologist, theoretical biologist, author, and academic
AwardsNational Award for young mathematicians, Unione Matematica Italiana
Academic background
EducationDr in Mathematics
Alma materUniversity of Pisa
ThesisComplessità di calcolo delle funzioni ricorsive. (1971)
Academic work
InstitutionsCavaillès Center, République des Savoirs
Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) et Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS), Paris, France

Longo has conducted research in the fields of mathematics (focusing on the mathematics of computing) and its connections with biology, computer science, and physics. He has authored or co-authored five books entitled, Le cauchemar de Prométhée. Les sciences et leurs limites (2023), Matematica e senso. Per non divenir macchine (2022), Perspectives on Organisms: Biological Time, Symmetries and Singularities with M. Montévil (2014),[2] Mathematics and the Natural Sciences. The Physical Singularity of Life with F. Bailly (2011),[3] and Categories, Types and Structures. Category Theory for the working computer scientist with A. Asperti (1991).[4] He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles.

Longo is a Member of Academia Europaea,[5] and was the founder and Editor in Chief of Mathematical Structures in Computer Science from 1990 to 2015,[6] and co-founder of the Annals of Mathematics and Philosophy.[7]

Education

Longo earned his Italian doctorate in mathematics from the University of Pisa in 1971, with a thesis titled, "Complessità di calcolo delle funzioni ricorsive". He then pursued a three-year doctoral scholarship (perfezionamento) in "Logica e calcolabilita".[1]

Career

Following his university education in Pisa, Longo began his academic career as an assistant professor in 1973 in Applied Mathematics, then associate professor of Mathematical Logic in 1981 and a professor of Computer Science at the University of Pisa in 1987. He held four one-year appointments as young researcher at U. C. Berkeley in 1980 and M.I.T. in 1981, then as Invited Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in 1987 and Ecole Normale Supérieure in 1989.. From 2013 to 2019, he served as an adjunct professor in the School of Medicine at Tufts University in Boston, USA and as fellow, in 2014, at Institut d'Etudes Avancées, Nantes, France.[8]

Longo held the position of Research Director at Centre National de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) from 1990 to 2012 and has been serving as a Research Director Emeritus since 2012, always affiliated at ENS, Paris.

Research

During his early research career, Longo focused on analyzing the syntactic and semantic properties of fundamental functional programming languages including Lambda Calculus and Combinatory Logic. He integrated his research findings into a broader framework that explored the connections between diverse mathematical theories like recursion theory, type theory, category theory, and denotational semantics, and their practical implementation in functional languages.[9]

He then took an interdisciplinary approach to explore the role of physics in biology to comprehend extended criticality,[10] anti-entropy,[11] and biological time.[12] Later, his research was directed toward the epistemology of theoretical biology, and Interfaces of Physics, Biology, and Computing.[13]

Mathematics and computing

Longo used an interdisciplinary research approach to explore the relationship between several mathematical theories and computer science, particularly by investigating the mathematical semantics of programming languages.[14] His research contributed to constructing a mathematical framework regarding the theory of programming and generated results related to syntax and semantics. In related research he explored the structural properties of the set-theoretical models of lamda-calculus[15] and established new links to Recursion in Higher Types.[16][17] Collaborating with E. Moggi he characterized hereditary effective operations (HEO) and Kleene-Kreisel countable functionals.[18][19] In 1986, he further analyzed the computability in higher types and proved a completeness theorem for type checking using a model that was created based on the idea of recursion theory.[20]

Longo's research in the field contributed towards the development of technical tools for polymorphism[21] and emphasized the connections between concepts utilized in computer science and mathematical structures derived from generalized recursion, demonstration theory, and category theory.[22] Between 1991 and 1993, he researched ad hoc polymorphism and demonstrated the characteristics of "parametricity" of second order systems[23][24] as well as developed extension of classical functional systems.[25][26] In addition, he proposed a novel analysis of the "invariance levels" of proofs through the concept of Prototype Proofs within Type Theory[27] which was later applied to investigate the concrete incompleteness theorem.[28]

Cognition and mathematics

In 1993, Longo made a thematic change in his research and elaborated the relatability of cognitive phenomena to the foundations of mathematical knowledge. He examined concepts such as mathematical continuity, infinity, computational representations[29][30] and also investigated the significance of action and movement in shaping the understanding of geometric space.[31] His work provided insights into the role of order and symmetries in the cognitive foundations of mathematics.[32] Furthermore, he explored the relationship between the invention of perspective in painting and its connection to the foundations of geometry and the concept of infinity in mathematics.[33]

Longo's research in the field served as the initiating point for his project titled, Geometry and Cognition.[34] He has integrated the mathematical organization of space with the concept of causality in physics and natural science.[35][36] Together with Bailly, he developed a mathematical theory that focused on understanding the notions of complexity and information within geometric structures and evaluated the geometry associated with different levels of the organization.[37] In addition, he initiated a team at LIENS called Complexity and Morphological Information which has been responsible for projects like "Physical singularities and effective computability".[38]

Epistemology and theoretical biology

Longo has researched theoretical biology in collaboration with biologists and philosophers of biology. His work includes the exploration of the concept of simplexity, which refers to the initiation of simple processes through complex pathways[39] and the study of association between randomness and the growth of biological organization in ontogenesis and evolution, which originated the notion of anti-entropy, following a 2009 paper with Bailly.[40] Additionally, he introduced the concepts of differential causality and enablement to understand causality in biology and argued that a significant aspect of biological evolution involves the continuous alteration of the relevant phase space.[41] His investigations have led to insights on the default state of cells characterized by proliferation, variation, and motility, as well as the proposal of a framing principle involving non-identical iterations of morphogenetic processes.[42] In 2017, he further explored the dependence of present and future dynamics of life on history, in comparison with path dependence in physics[43] as part of a theoretical framework to organize principles for biological thinking and experimenting.[44] Furthermore, he criticized the current uses of the notion of information in biology, within the framework of exploring the relationship between science and technology.[45]

Awards and honors

Bibliography

Books
  • Categories, types, and structures (1990) ISBN 978-0262011259
  • Mathematics and the Natural Sciences: The Physical Singularity of Life (2011) ISBN 978-1848166936
  • Perspectives on Organisms: Biological time, Symmetries and Singularities (2014) ISBN 978-3642359378
  • Matematica e senso. Per non divenir macchine (2022) ISBN 978-8857587363
  • Le cauchemar de Prométhée. Les sciences et leurs limites (2023) ISBN 978-2130843085

Selected articles
  • Barendregt, H. P., & Longo, G. (1980). Equality of lambda terms in the model T omega. JR Hindley; JP Seldin (eds.), To HB Curry: essays on combinatory logic, lambda calculus and formalism, 303–337.
  • Longo, G., & Moggi, E. (1990). A category-theoretic characterization of functional completeness. Theoretical Computer Science, 70(2), 193–211.
  • Longo, G. (2002, February). On the proofs of some formally unprovable propositions and Prototype Proofs in Type Theory. In Types for Proofs and Programs: International Workshop, TYPES 2000 Durham, UK, December 8–12, 2000 Selected Papers (pp. 160–180). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg. (revised: in Philosophia Mathematica, 19(3): 255–280, 2011)
  • Bailly, F., & Longo, G. (2007). Randomness and determinism in the interplay between the continuum and the discrete. Mathematical Structures in Computer Science, 17(2), 289–305.
  • Bailly, F., Longo, G., & Montevil, M. (2011). A 2-dimensional geometry for biological time. Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, 106(3), 474–484.
  • Buiatti, M., Longo, G. (2013 ) Randomness and Multi-level Interactions in Biology. Theory in Biosciences, vol. 132, n. 3:139–158.
  • Longo, G. (2018 ) How Future Depends on Past Histories and Rare Events in Systems of Life, Foundations of Science, (DOI), 23 (3):443–474.
  • Longo, G. (2019). Interfaces of incompleteness. Systemics of Incompleteness and Quasi-systems, 3–55.
  • Longo, G., & Longo, S. (2021). Réinventer le corps et l'espace. in "In difesa dell'umano", 2021

References
  1. "Giuseppe LONGO". www.di.ens.fr.
  2. "Perspectives on organisms : biological time, symmetries and singularities | WorldCat.org". www.worldcat.org.
  3. "Mathematics and the natural sciences : the physical singularity of life".
  4. "Categories, types, and structures: an introduction to category theory for the working computer scientist".
  5. "Academy of Europe: Longo Giuseppe". www.ae-info.org.
  6. "Editorial board". Cambridge Core.
  7. "Editorial board – Math x Phi". July 22, 2021.
  8. "Giuseppe LONGO – Fellows – Nantes Institute for Advanced Study Foundation". www.iea-nantes.fr.
  9. Longo, Giuseppe (1988). "The Lambda-Calculus: connections to higher type Recursion Theory, Proof-Theory, Category Theory" (PDF). Annals of Pure and Applied Logic.
  10. Longo, Giuseppe; Montévil, Maël (June 1, 2012). "The Inert vs. the Living State of Matter: Extended Criticality, Time Geometry, Anti-Entropy – An Overview". Frontiers in Physiology. 3. doi:10.3389/fphys.2012.00039.
  11. Bailly, Francis; Longo, Giuseppe (March 1, 2009). "Biological organization and anti-entropy". Journal of Biological Systems. 17 (1): 63–96. doi:10.1142/S0218339009002715 – via worldscientific.com (Atypon).
  12. Longo, Giuseppe; Montévil, Maël (June 1, 2014). Longo, Giuseppe; Montévil, Maël (eds.). Perspectives on Organisms: Biological time, Symmetries and Singularities. Springer. pp. 99–119. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-35938-5_4 – via Springer Link.
  13. "Models vs. Simulations: a comparison by their Theoretical Symmetries".
  14. "Equality of lambda terms in the model T omega (1980) | www.narcis.nl".
  15. Hindley, R.; Longo, G. (1980). "Lambda-calculus models and extensionality". Zeitschrift für Mathematische Logik und Grundlagen der Mathematik. 26 (19–21): 289–310. doi:10.1002/malq.19800261902. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2023-06-01 – via Academia.edu.
  16. "Recursion theoretic operators and morphims on numbered sets" (PDF).
  17. Longo, Giuseppe (1984). "Effectively Given Domains and Lambda-Calculus Models". Information and Control. 62: 36–63. doi:10.1016/S0019-9958(84)80009-1 – via Academia.edu.
  18. "Four letters by Georg Kreisel" (PDF).
  19. Longo, G.; Moggi, E. (December 1, 1984). "The hereditary partial effective functionals and recursion theory in higher types". The Journal of Symbolic Logic. 49 (4): 1319–1332. doi:10.2307/2274281. JSTOR 2274281. S2CID 18711951 – via Cambridge University Press.
  20. Longo, G.; Martini, S. (January 1, 1986). "Computability in higher types, Pω and the completeness of type assignment". Theoretical Computer Science. 46: 197–217. doi:10.1016/0304-3975(86)90030-7 – via ScienceDirect.
  21. "The Finitary Projection Model for Second Order Lambda Calculus and Solutions to Higher Order Domain Equations".
  22. Longo, Giuseppe; Moggi, Eugenio (January 26, 1990). "A category-theoretic characterization of functional completeness". Theoretical Computer Science. 70 (2): 193–211. doi:10.1016/0304-3975(90)90122-X – via ScienceDirect.
  23. "Parametric and Type-Dependent Polymorphism".
  24. Longo, Giuseppe; Milsted, Kathleen; Soloviev, Sergei (June 1, 1993). "The Genericity Theorem and effective Parametricity in Polymorphic lambda-calculus". Theoretical Computer Science. 121 (1–2): 323. doi:10.1016/0304-3975(93)90093-9 – via hal.science.
  25. Castagna, Giuseppe; Ghelli, Giorgio; Longo, Giuseppe (June 1, 1993). "A semantics for λ &-early: a calculus with overloading and early binding". In Bezem, Marc; Groote, Jan Friso (eds.). Typed Lambda Calculi and Applications. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 664. Springer. pp. 107–123. doi:10.1007/BFb0037101. ISBN 978-3-540-56517-8 – via Springer Link.
  26. Castagna, G.; Ghelli, G.; Longo, G. (February 15, 1995). "A Calculus for Overloaded Functions with Subtyping". Information and Computation. 117 (1): 115–135. doi:10.1006/inco.1995.1033 – via ScienceDirect.
  27. Longo, Giuseppe (May 1, 2000). "Prototype Proofs in Type Theory". MLQ. 46 (2): 257–266. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1521-3870(200005)46:2<257::AID-MALQ257>3.0.CO;2-V – via CrossRef.
  28. Longo, Giuseppe (October 1, 2011). "Reflections on Concrete Incompleteness". Philosophia Mathematica. 19 (3): 255–280. doi:10.1093/philmat/nkr016 – via IEEE Xplore.
  29. "The Mathematical Continuum: From Intuition to Logic* Giuseppe Longo CNRS and Ecole Normale Sup Иerieure 45, rue d'Ulm 75005 Par" (PDF).
  30. Longo, Giuseppe (June 1, 1999). "Mathematical Intelligence, Infinity and Machines: Beyond Godelitis". Journal of Consciousness Studies. 6 (11–12): 11–12 – via PhilPapers.
  31. Longo, Giuseppe (June 1, 1997). "Géométrie, mouvement, espace : cognition et mathématiques". Intellectica. 25 (2): 195–218. doi:10.3406/intel.1997.1564 – via www.persee.fr.
  32. Longo, Giuseppe; Viarouge, Arnaud (April 1, 2010). "Mathematical Intuition and the Cognitive Roots of Mathematical Concepts". Topoi. 29 (1): 15–27. doi:10.1007/s11245-009-9063-6. S2CID 73581533 – via Springer Link.
  33. "Mathematical Infinity "in prospettiva" and Spaces of Possibilities" (PDF).
  34. "Ecole Normale Supérieure". www.di.ens.fr.
  35. Bailly, Francis; Longo, Giuseppe (February 25, 2004). Mind and Causality. John Benjamins. pp. 149–197 – via www.jbe-platform.com.
  36. Longo, Giuseppe (June 1, 2009). Epstein, Robert; Roberts, Gary; Beber, Grace (eds.). Parsing the Turing Test: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer. Springer Netherlands. pp. 377–411. doi:10.1007/978-1-4020-6710-5_23 – via Springer Link.
  37. "Objective and Epistemic Complexity in Biology" (PDF).
  38. Longo, Giuseppe (October 1, 2012). "Incomputability in Physics and Biology". Mathematical Structures in Computer Science. 22 (5): 880–900. doi:10.1017/S0960129511000569. S2CID 7841889 – via Cambridge University Press.
  39. Longo, Giuseppe; Montévil, Maël; Pocheville, Arnaud (June 1, 2014). "L'incompressible complexité du réel et la construction évolutive du simple" – via hal.science. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  40. Longo, Giuseppe; Montévil, Maël (June 1, 2012). Dinneen, Michael J.; Khoussainov, Bakhadyr; Nies, André (eds.). Computation, Physics and Beyond: International Workshop on Theoretical Computer Science, WTCS 2012, Dedicated to Cristian S. Calude on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday, Auckland, New Zealand, February 21–24, 2012, Revised Selected and Invited Papers. Springer. pp. 289–308. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-27654-5_22. S2CID 16929949 – via Springer Link.
  41. Longo, Giuseppe; Montévil, Maël (October 1, 2013). "Extended criticality, phase spaces and enablement in biology". Chaos, Solitons & Fractals. 55: 64–79. doi:10.1016/j.chaos.2013.03.008. S2CID 55589891 – via ScienceDirect.
  42. Longo, Giuseppe; Montévil, Maël; Sonnenschein, Carlos; Soto, Ana M. (December 1, 2015). "In search of principles for a Theory of Organisms". Journal of Biosciences. 40 (5): 955–968. doi:10.1007/s12038-015-9574-9. PMC 5505559. PMID 26648040 – via Springer Link.
  43. Longo, Giuseppe (September 1, 2018). "How Future Depends on Past and Rare Events in Systems of Life". Foundations of Science. 23 (3): 443–474. doi:10.1007/s10699-017-9535-x. S2CID 254503548 – via Springer Link.
  44. Longo, Giuseppe (July 7, 2018). "Information and Causality: Mathematical Reflections on Cancer Biology". Organisms. Journal of Biological Sciences. 2 (1): 83–104. doi:10.13133/2532-5876_3.15 – via rosa.uniroma1.it.
  45. Longo, Giuseppe (June 1, 2020). "Information, Science and Democracy, for an Ethics of Scientific Knowledge" (PDF). In Fabris, Adriano (ed.). Trust. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics. Vol. 54. Springer International Publishing. pp. 63–79. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-44018-3_5. ISBN 978-3-030-44017-6. S2CID 216489100 – via Springer Link.


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