Background
Robin Gandy was born in the village of Peppard, Oxfordshire, England.
Robin Gandy was born in the village of Peppard, Oxfordshire, England.
He was a friend, student, and associate of Alan Turing, having been supervised by Turing during his Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge (graduated 1953), where they worked together.
Educated at Abbotsholme, Gandy took two years of the Mathematical Tripos, at King"s College, Cambridge, before enlisting for military service in 1940. In 1946, he completed Participant III of the Mathematical Tripos, then began studying for a Doctor of Philosophy under Turing"s supervision. He completed his thesis, On axiomatic systems in mathematics and theories in Physics, in 1952.
Gandy held positions at the Universities of Leicester, Leeds, and Manchester.
Gandy was a visiting associate professor at Stanford from 1966 to 1967, and held a similar position at University of California, Los Angeles in 1968. In 1969, he moved to Wolfson College, Oxford, where he became Reader in Mathematical Logic.
One of the residential buildings of the college is now named in his honour. He is best known for his work in recursion theory.
His contributions include the Spector–Gandy theorem, the Gandy Stage Comparison theorem, and the Gandy Selection Theorem.
He also made a significant contribution to the understanding of the Church—Turing thesis, and his generalization of the Turing machine is called a Gandy machine. Gandy died in Oxford, England. He was the son of Thomas Hall Gandy (1876–1948) and Ida Caroline née Hony (1885–1977) and great-great-grandson of the architect and artist Joseph Gandy (1771–1843).
He was a member of the Apostles.