Torkel Franzén

Sad news: Torkel Franzén has died yesterday. I’ve known Torkel since my undergraduate days, when he was tirelessly setting people straight on logical and philosophical matters in the newsgroup sci.logic. He wrote two wonderful books, a technical book on incompleteness (Inexhaustibility: A Non-Exhaustive Treatment) and one on misconceptions and misuses of Gödel’s Theorems. He will be missed.

Torkel Franzén, well known for his many Usenet posts, died of skeleton cancer at Wednesday, April 19, at the age of 56.

Torkel Franzén worked as a university lecturer at the department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden. He taught programming courses, mostly using Java and Prolog. He earned his PhD in 2004. His thesis (in philosophy) was titled “Provability and Truth”. He also wrote books, such as “Gödel’s Theorem. An Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse”, which appeared in 2005.

Gödel’s Theorem was indeed one of his major interests. He wrote many Usenet posts on this and related subjects, but he did also write posts on many other subjects.

Torkel’s too early death is a great loss for his family, colleagues,
and Usenet friends.

Erland Gadde
Department of Mathematics
Luleå University of Technology
Sweden

See also Sol Feferman’s post on FOM.

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