biography

Born in Jinan, Shandong, in the Republic of China (today in the People's Republic of China), Wang
received his early education in China. He obtained a B.Sc. degree in mathematics from the National
Southwestern Associated University in 1943 and an M.A. in Philosophy from Tsinghua University in
1945, where his teachers included Feng Youlan and Jin Yuelin, after which he moved to the United
States for further graduate studies. He studied logic at Harvard University, culminating in a Ph.D. in
1948. He was appointed to an assistant professorship at Harvard the same year.
During the early 1950s, Wang studied with Paul Bernays in Zurich. In 1956, he was appointed
Reader in the Philosophy of Mathematics at Oxford University. In 1959, Wang wrote on
an IBM704 computer a program that in only 9 minutes mechanically proved several
hundred mathematical logic theorems in Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica.[1] In 1961,
he was appointed Gordon Mckay Professor of Mathematical Logic and Applied Mathematics at
Harvard.[2] From 1967 until 1991, he headed the logic research group at Rockefeller
University in New York City, where he was professor of logic. In 1972, Wang joined in a group of
Chinese American scientists led by Chih-Kung Jen as the first such delegation from the U.S. to the
People's Republic of China.
One of Wang's most important contributions was the Wang tile.[3] He showed that any Turing
machine can be turned into a set of Wang tiles. The first noted example of aperiodic tiling is a set of
Wang tiles, whose nonexistence Wang had once conjectured, discovered by his student Robert
Berger in 1966. A philosopher in his own right,[4] Wang also developed a penetrating interpretation
of Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy of mathematics, which he called "anthropologism." He
chronicled Kurt Gdel's philosophical ideas and authored several books on the subject,[5] thereby
providing contemporary scholars an inestimable resource for Gdel's later philosophical thought.
In 1983 he was presented with the first Milestone Prize for Automated Theorem-Proving, sponsored
by the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.[6]

Hao Wang, a logician who sought a way to link

mathematics to philosophy, died on Saturday at New York
Hospital. He was 73 and lived in Manhattan.
The cause was lymphoma, said his wife, Hanne Tierney.

Dr. Wang was one of the few confidants of the

mathematician and logician Kurt Godel and a founding
president of the Godel Society in Vienna. Dr. Wang
introduced some of Dr. Godel's philosophical ideas in his
book, "Reflections on Kurt Godel" (1987). In his final
work, "A Logical Journey: From Godel to Philosophy," to
be published by M.I.T. Press, he expanded on Dr. Godel's
philosophy, recounting conversations with and letters
from the logician.
The conversations focused on developing a more coherent
and expansive view of the world going beyond traditional
analytic philosophy and taking account of the thoughts of
other scientists, including not only logicians and computer
programmers, but also people working in all fields of
science.
His early mathematical achievements contributed to
advances in computer science in the 1950's. While working
for the International Business Machines Corporation, he
discovered a faster way to prove certain kinds of logical
truths using computers. He was awarded the Milestone
Prize for Automated Theorem Proving for that work in
1983.
He also posed what is known as the "tiling problem,"
which examines the challenge of how to cover a plane
using tiles of the same shape.
Dr. Wang was born in Jinan, China, on May 20, 1921. He
received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the
National Southwestern Associated University in China in

1943 and a master's degree in philosophy from Qinghua

University in 1945. Dr. Wang, who was a member of the
Association for Symbolic Logic, was named honorary
professor at two universities in China.
In 1948, he came to the United States on a scholarship
from Harvard University, where he received a doctorate in
philosophy. At Oxford University in England, he was the
John Locke lecturer in philosophy and Reader in the
Philosophy of Mathematics. In 1961, he returned to
Harvard as the Gordon McKay Professor of Mathematical
Logic and Applied Mathematics.
He joined the faculty of Rockefeller University in 1967 and
helped assemble a group of renowned philosophers and
logicians. The group disbanded in 1976 under budgetary
pressure from the university's president, Dr. Frederick
Seitz. Dr. Wang was the only logic professor to remain at
the university.
In addition to his wife, Dr. Wang is survived by two sons,
San-You Wang of Boston and Yi-Ming Wang of
Washington; a daughter, Jane Hsiao-Ching Wang of
Boston, and two grandchildren.
Wang tiles (or Wang dominoes), first proposed by mathematician, logician, and
philosopher Hao Wang in 1961, are a class of formal systems. They are modelled visually
by square tiles with a color on each side. A set of such tiles is selected (for example the set
in the picture). Then copies of the tiles are arranged side by side with matching colors,
but without rotating or reflecting the tiles.