Grigori Mints

Grigori Mints (June 7, 1939 – May 29, 2014) was a Russian philosopher and mathematician who worked in mathematical logic. He was born in Leningrad, in the Soviet Union (now St. Petersburg, Russia), and received his Ph.D. in 1965 from the Leningrad State University under Nikolai Aleksandrovich Shanin with a thesis entitled "On Predicate and Operator Variants for Building Theories of Constructive Mathematics". In 1990 he received his D.Sc. from Leningrad State University with a thesis entitled "Proof Transformations and Synthesis of Programs".[1] He was a Stanford University professor.[2] Since 1991, Grigori "Grisha" Mints was a professor of philosophy and, by courtesy, of mathematics and of computer science at Stanford University. Before joining Stanford, Mints held research positions at the Steklov Mathematical Institute, Leningrad University, and the Estonian Academy of Sciences.

Considered one of the most distinguished logicians in the world, Mints was passionate about the applications of logic to philosophy. His expertise was in proof theory – the analysis of the structure of mathematical reasoning. Mints was elected to the Estonian Academy of Sciences in 2008 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010.

Mints was a very active member of the steering committee of the WoLLIC series of workshops on logic and language, after having been a member of the community in several capacities such as invited speaker, PC member, PC chair, Organising Committee chair, guest editor of proceedings and special issue, and steering committee member.