Yiannis N. Moschovakis

Yiannis Nicolas Moschovakis (Greek: Γιάννης Μοσχοβάκης; born January 18, 1938) is a set theorist, descriptive set theorist, and recursion (computability) theorist, at UCLA.

Yiannis N. Moschovakis
Moschovakis in 2005
Born	Yiannis Nicolas Moschovakis (1938-01-18) January 18, 1938 (age 87) Athens, Greece
Alma mater	University of Wisconsin–Madison
Known for	Effective descriptive set theory
Scientific career
Fields	Mathematics
Institutions	UCLA
Doctoral advisor	Stephen Kleene
Doctoral students	Alexander S. Kechris Phokion G. Kolaitis

His book Descriptive Set Theory (North-Holland) is the primary reference for the subject. He is especially associated with the development of the effective, or lightface, version of descriptive set theory, and he is known for the Moschovakis coding lemma that is named after him.

Biography

Moschovakis earned his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1963 under the direction of Stephen Kleene, with a dissertation entitled Recursive Analysis. In 2015, he was elected as a fellow of the American Mathematical Society "for contributions to mathematical logic, especially set theory and computability theory, and for exposition".^[1]

For many years, he has split his time between UCLA and the University of Athens (he retired from the latter in July 2005).

Moschovakis is married to Joan Moschovakis, with whom he gave the 2014 Lindström Lectures at the University of Gothenburg.^[2]

Publications

• Elementary induction on abstract structures. North-Holland. 1974.^[3] 2nd edn. Dover. 2008. ISBN 9780486152011.
• Descriptive set theory. North-Holland. 1980. ISBN 9780444853059.^[4] 2nd edn. 2005. Second edition available online
• Notes on set theory. North-Holland. 1994. ISBN 9783540941804. 2nd edn. 2005.