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Azriel Lévy

Azriel Lévy is an Israeli mathematician and logician, a professor emeritus at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem known for his work in set theory.

born 1934The Lévy hierarchyThe Lévy collapseConsistency results on the axiom of choice

Occupation: mathematician, university teacher, logician
Education: Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Azriel Lévy was born in 1934 in Haifa

Azriel Lévy was born in Haifa in 1934. During his studies he was one of the editors of the university's duplication project.

He earned his Ph.D. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1958, supervised by Abraham Fraenkel and Abraham Robinson. His thesis dealt with the metamathematics of set theory. In 1958 and 1959 he was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT, and then a visiting lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.

He joined the Hebrew University faculty in 1961. Using Paul Cohen's forcing method, he proved the consistency of several statements that contradict the axiom of choice. With J. D. Halpern he showed that the Boolean prime ideal theorem does not imply the axiom of choice, and the Lévy hierarchy and Lévy collapse are named after him.

His doctoral students include Dov Gabbay, Moti Gitik and Menachem Magidor. In 1979 he chaired the coordinating council of academic staff organizations during a labor dispute. He also led the development of a mathematical logic course at the Open University and chaired the Education Ministry's mathematics subject committee.