March 15, 2026
Tears, typos, and a legend
In Memoriam: John W. Addison, my PhD advisor
A beloved logic legend remembered; comments cry, correct, and click
TLDR: A heartfelt tribute honors Berkeley logician John W. Addison, 96, and the community responded with equal parts emotion, fact-checking, and an official obituary link. The thread’s vibe: deep gratitude for a life-changing teacher, plus classic internet energy—sentiment, typos, and a quick correction to set the record straight.
A moving tribute to John W. Addison — the soft‑spoken UC Berkeley logic giant — sent readers straight into their feelings. The post paints him as the rare mentor who could turn a lost newcomer into a researcher tackling deep ideas, from infinite games to elegant math proofs, while swapping stories about greats like Kurt Gödel and Alfred Tarski. One anecdote about his cheeky exam line — “This statement is false” — had readers nodding at his mix of rigor and wit.
But in the comments, emotions met the internet’s favorite pastime: nitpicking. One reader sighed, “this made me long for more mathematics,” while another cut through the sentiment with a scalpel-sharp “Correction (1930–2025),” instantly becoming the thread’s fact-checker-in-chief. A third chimed in with a heartfelt note about their own advisor — typos and all — capturing the raw, unfiltered vibe of grief online. And, of course, someone dropped the official Berkeley memorial link, because what’s a tribute without a source? The micro-drama was classic: feelings vs. formatting, nostalgia vs. nitpicks, all orbiting a shared respect for a teacher who changed lives. The consensus? Addison was the kind of mentor who made hard ideas feel possible — and the comments proved he still inspires, even in a thread split between tears and copyedits.
Key Points
- •John W. Addison (1930–2025), a UC Berkeley logician, died in 2025 at age 96.
- •The author took Addison’s 1966 logic course focused on model theory and, despite lacking prerequisites, excelled and tied for the top mark.
- •In Addison’s definability seminar, the author solved an unsolved problem by analogical reasoning inspired by a Hartley Rogers paper.
- •Addison’s guidance led the author to formalize an infinite-game approach, culminating in a dissertation describing the order type of the Borel sets (350 pages).
- •Addison mentored generously and connected the author with leading logicians, including Tarski, Kleene, Church, and shared insights from conversations with Gödel.