Scienceשהרן שלח

Saharon Shelah

Saharon Shelah is an Israeli mathematician known for his work in mathematical logic, model theory and set theory, and a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Rutgers University.

born 1945Classification theory in model theoryProper forcing and PCF theoryIndependence of Whitehead's problem

Born: 3 July 1945, Jerusalem
Occupation: mathematician, university teacher, logician
Education: Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Saharon Shelah was born in 1945 in Jerusalem

Shelah was born in Jerusalem on July 3, 1945. He is the son of the poet Yonatan Ratosh and of Dvora. He attended the Tichon Hadash high school in Tel Aviv and decided at 15 to become a mathematician.

He earned a B.Sc. from Tel Aviv University in 1964 and served in the IDF from 1964 to 1967. He completed an M.Sc. at the Hebrew University in 1967 under Haim Gaifman. In 1969 he received his PhD there for work on stable theories, supervised by Michael Rabin.

He lectured at Princeton University in 1969 and 1970, then was an assistant professor at UCLA. He became a professor at the Hebrew University in 1974. Since 1986 he has been a distinguished visiting professor at Rutgers University.

His work includes classification theory, which solved Morley's problem, proper forcing and PCF theory. He showed that Whitehead's problem cannot be decided in standard set theory. He has written about 1,100 research papers.

Shelah is married to Yael and has 3 children. His brother, the judge Hamman Shelah, was murdered with his wife and daughter in the Ras Burqa attack in 1985.