History
Kleene algebras were not defined by Kleene; he introduced regular expressions and asked for a complete set of axioms, which would allow derivation of all equations among regular expressions. The problem was first studied by John Horton Conway under the name of regular algebras. The axioms of Kleene algebras solve this problem, as was first shown by Dexter Kozen.
Read more about this topic: Kleene Algebra
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under mens reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (18961970)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernisms high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (18151902)