David Nelson, an American mathematician and logician, was born on January 2, 1918 in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.
Education
David Nelson completed his undergraduate and graduate coursework at the University of Wisconsin - Madison in 1939 and 1940, respectively. Nelson completed his Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1946. His dissertation, entitled "Recursive Functions and Intuitionistic Number Theory," served as the capstone project for his doctorate.
Fellow mathematician Stephen Cole Kleene served as Nelson"s doctoral advisor.
Nelson, consequently, was Kleene"s first doctoral student.
According to the Association for Symbolic Logic:
Nelson"s research was in the area of intuitionistic logic and its connection with recursive function theory. He investigated the relationship, in intuitionistic formal systems, between a truth definition and the provability of formulas representing statements of number theory.
Kleene had previously introduced the intuitionistic truth definition and arithmetized this truth notion in his definition of realizability of a formula by a number. As a consequence, they demonstrated that certain classically true formulas are unverifiable in the intuitionistic predicate calculus with strong negation.
Career
Arsenal
Born in Douglas Water, Nelson played youth football with Street Bernard"s, before moving to England and signing for Division One club Arsenal for a £200 fee in May 1936. He made just 9 appearances before the Second World War broke out in September 1939, but had experienced some joy in the reserve team, winning the London Combination in 1936-1937, 1937-1938 and 1938-1929. He made over 160 appearances for the Gunners during the war and made further competitive appearances during the 1945-1946 and 1946-1947 seasons, before leaving Highbury in December 1946.
Nelson made 29 competitive appearances and scored four goals in over a decade with Arsenal.
= Wartime guest appearances Nelson guested for Clapton Orient, Tottenham Hotspur, Brentford and Chesterfield during the Second World War and made three appearances for Southern League side Colchester United during the 1945-1946 season. Fulham
Nelson joined Division Two club Fulham in December 1946, remaining at Craven Cottage until August 1947.
He made 24 appearances and scored four goals for the club Brentford
Nelson and Fulham teammate Peter Buchanan signed for newly relegated Division Two side Brentford in a £6000 deal in August 1947.
He was a regular at wing half and departed Griffin Park in February 1950, having made 113 appearances and scored five goals.
Queens Park Rangers
He remained at Loftus Road for just over two years and departed having made just 31 league appearances. Crystal Palace
Nelson dropped down to the Division Three South to sign for Crystal Palace in March 1952 and made just 12 league appearances before departing the following year. Ashford Town (Kent)
Nelson saw out his career with a player-manager spell at Kent League side Ashford Town between March 1953 and December 1955.
Nelson served as a sergeant in the British Army during the Second World War.