mathematician university professor
He studied at Northwestern University and, from 1970, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received his Doctor of Philosophy in 1976 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (his thesis Recursion on Inadmissible Ordinals was written under the supervision of Gerald East Sacks).
His main research interest lies in mathematical logic, in particular in set theory and recursion theory. Friedman is the brother of mathematician Harvey Friedman. In 1979 Sy Friedman accepted a position at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 1990 he became a full professor there.
Since 1999 he has been a professor of mathematical logic at the University of Vienna.
He is a Fellow of Collegium Invisibile.
