Boris Trakhtenbrot

Boris (Boaz) Abramovich Trakhtenbrot (1921 to 2016) was a Russian-Israeli mathematician who worked in logic, algorithms, the theory of computation and cybernetics. Born into a Jewish family in Brichevo in northern Bessarabia, now Moldova, he studied at the Moldovan State Pedagogical Institute in Kishinev, Chernivtsi University and the Mathematical Institute of the Ukrainian Academy of Science, where he completed his Ph.D. in 1950. He worked at Akademgorodok in Novosibirsk during the 1960s and 1970s. In 1964 he discovered and proved the gap theorem of theoretical computer science, and he also proved the result in logic, model theory and computability theory now known as Trakhtenbrot's theorem. After emigrating to Israel in 1981 he became a professor at Tel Aviv University, where he remained as professor emeritus until his death at the age of 95.