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Akira Nakashima and logical modeling of discrete circuits. (Russian. English summary) Zbl 1153.01019

Karpenko, A.S. (ed.), Logicheskie issledovaniya. 14. Moskva: Nauka (ISBN 978-5-02-035860-7/hbk), 187-217 (2007).
This publication is the self-proclaimed first scientific biographical article on the Japanese engineer and mathematician, Akira Nakashima (1908-1970), the pioneer of switching theory and of the logical theory of discrete circuits. Nakashima’s work dates from the mid 1930s. The author describes the history of this pioneering work, which is still disputed or ignored in some quarters given parallel work by C. E. Shannon, which was easily available in English since 1938.
The present article contains a detailed analysis of the first three papers written by Nakashima in Japanese between 1935 and 1937. Of these the first was, according to Levi, still written in a terminology connected to the technology of circuits which, however, was easily translatable into logical-algebraic language. The following two, however, were already written in more formal language and predated many of Shannon’s notions by two or three years. Nakashima, however, did not receive any awards for his work even within Japan. Nakashima’s students, among them Kan-ichi Ohashi, Mochinori Goto, and Yasuo Komamiya, developed the first Japanese high-speed computers ETL Mark I and Mark II based on Nakashima’s theories.
For the entire collection see [Zbl 1132.03001].

MSC:

01A70 Biographies, obituaries, personalia, bibliographies
94-03 History of information and communication theory

Biographic References:

Nakashima, Akira

Software:

AKIRA
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