pratt@coraki.UUCP (Vaughan Pratt) (08/18/86)
SPEAKER Professor Wu Wen-tsun TITLE Mechanization of Geometry DATE Thursday, August 21 TIME 2:00 pm PLACE Margaret Jacks Hall, room 352 A mechanical method of geometry based on Ritt's characteristic set theory will be described which has a variety of applications including mechanical geometry theorem proving in particular. The method has been implemented on computers by several researchers and turns out to be efficient for many applications. BACKGROUND Professor Wu received his doctorate in France in the 1950's, and was a member of the Bourbaki group. In the first National Science and Technology Awards in China in 1956, Professor Wu was one of three people awarded a first prize for their contributions to science and technology. He is currently the president of the Chinese Mathematical Society. In 1977, Wu extended classical algebraic geometry work of Ritt to an algorithm for proving theorems of elementary geometry. The method has recently become well-known in the Automated Theorem Proving community; at the University of Texas it has been applied it to the machine proof of more than 300 theorems of Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry.