Guide to the Nuel Belnap Papers, 1955-2020, ASP.2018.02

Arrangement

Repository
ULS Archives & Special Collections
Title
Nuel Belnap Papers
Creator
Belnap, Nuel, 1930-
Collection Number
ASP.2018.02
Extent
19.2 Linear Feet (47 boxes)
Extent
6.96 Gigabytes
Date
1955-2020
Abstract
Nuel Dinsmore Belnap, Jr. (1930-2024) was an American logician and philosopher who was a professor in the philosophy department at the University of Pittsburgh from 1963 to 2011. Belnap made many contributions to philosophical logic, including in relevance logics, the logic of questions, the logic of agency, and branching space-times theory. The Nuel Belnap Papers consists of material created or collected by Belnap, dating from his time as a student at Yale to his later academic career as a professor at Yale and then University of Pittsburgh, into his later retirement. It documents much of Belnap's work on issues in philosophical logic, including both his writing projects, his teaching, and his correspondence with others in the field.
Language
The material in this collection is in English.
Author
Ben Snyder
Publisher
ULS Archives & Special Collections
Address
University of Pittsburgh Library System
Archives & Special Collections
Website: library.pitt.edu/archives-special-collections
Business Number: 412-648-3232 (Thomas) | 412-648-8190 (Hillman)
Contact Us: www.library.pitt.edu/ask-archivist
URL: http://library.pitt.edu/archives-special-collections

Copyright

The University of Pittsburgh holds both the property rights to this collection and the copyright for all material in this collection authored by Nuel Belnap. However, for other material in this collection the copyright may still be held by the original creator/author. Researchers are therefore advised to follow the regulations set forth in the U.S. Copyright Code when publishing, quoting, or reproducing material from this collection without the consent of the creator/author or that go beyond what is allowed by fair use.

Acquistion Information

Gift of Nuel Belnap in late 2017, with additions in 2020. The oral history interviews in Series VI. Audiovisual were donated by Anil Gupta in 2024.

Access Restrictions.

Files in Series V. Letters of Recommendation are closed until the death of the subject. Please contact Archives & Special Collections for more information about a specific file.

Files in Boxes 45 and 46 are closed for research until 2067.

Biography/History

Nuel Dinsmore Belnap, Jr. (1930-2024) was an American logician and philosopher who was a professor in the philosophy department at the University of Pittsburgh from 1963 to 2011. With his collaborator Alan Ross Anderson he developed relevance logic as an alternative means of understanding logical implication/entailment, going beyond both classical logic and earlier modal interpretations. Throughout his career Belnap would continue to make influential contributions to entailment logics and similar issues in philosophical logic.

Belnap was born on May 1st, 1930. He grew up in Winnetka, Illinois, close to Chicago. He went to University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, graduating in 1952 with a bachelors in philosophy. After graduating, he served in the U.S. Air Force for two years, working on an IBM 701 computer for the National Security Agency in Washington, D.C. After his service, Belnap would study at Yale, where he acquired an M.A. in philosophy in 1957 and then a PhD in philosophy in 1960. Belnap's dissertation advisor was Alan Ross Anderson, and his dissertation would mark the start of the two's collaboration on relevance logic and related work on entailment.

In 1960 he became an Assistant Professor at Yale. However, he would leave for the University of Pittsburgh in 1963, alongside former Yale Philosophy Department colleagues, including Wilfrid Sellars, Jerry Schneewind, and later Alan Ross Anderson. At the University of Pittsburgh, Belnap would continue his work on relevance logic and make influential contributions in various other fields of logic and philosophy. His work often involved collaborations, many with students he was advising. This included his work with Michael Dunn, the two developing Belnap-Dunn logic, also known as first-degree entailment logic. He also worked on the logic of questions and answers with Thomas B. Steel; developed the revision theory of truth with Anil Gupta; developed the prosentential theory of truth with Dorothy Grover and Joseph Camp; created a means of discussing agency in terms of "seeing to it that" (stit) with Michael Perloff and Ming Xu; and, with Thomas Mueller and Tomasz Placek, he developed branching space-times, introducing concepts from relativity theory into earlier branching times theories originating from Arthur Prior's work. Belnap's work on branching space-times theory and stit both show his interest in providing a rigorous semantics and metaphysics for talk about indeterminism and free agency. Among his rewards and honors, Belnap received a Fulbright Fellowship that allowed him to study in Louvain, Belgium, 1957-58; he received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation (1975), National Science Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He received an Honorary Doctorate from Leipzig Univeristy in 2000. He became a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2008.

Belnap married Joan Gohde Belnap (1930-1991) in 1953, later divorcing. Children from his first marriage include: Nuel Belnap, III, Christopher Belnap, Tyler Belnap, and Mary Jo Belnap Greene.

Belnap retired in 2011. He died on June 12, 2024 in Whitefield, New Hampshire.

Preferred Citation

Nuel Belnap Papers, 1955 - 2020, ASP.2018.02. Archives of Scientific Philosophy, Archives & Special Collections, University of Pittsburgh Library System

Arrangement

The Nuel Belnap Papers is arranged into six series:

I. Writing By Belnap

II. Writing By Other Authors

III. Classes and Teaching

IV. Correspondence

V. Letters of Recommendation

VI. Audiovisual

Processing Information

This collection was processed by Jonathan Patrick Howorth and Lance Lugar between Nov. 2018 and July 2019, by Jason Rampelt in 2021, and by Ben Snyder in 2024.

Scope and Contents

The Nuel Belnap Papers consists of material created or collected by Nuel Belnap. They date from his time as a student at Yale University to his later academic career as a professor at Yale and then University of Pittsburgh, into his later retirement. It documents much of Belnap's work on issues in philosophical logic, including both his writing projects, his teaching, and his correspondence with others in the field. Subjects covered include relevance logic, seeing to it that (stit), and branching space-times. There are also audio recordings of a 2009 conference held in Belnap's honor, and video recordings of interviews conducted by Anil Gupta where Belnap discusses his life and career.

Subjects

    Personal Names

    • Belnap, Nuel, 1930-
    • Anderson, Alan Ross
    • Bressan, Aldo
    • Gupta, Anil, 1949-
    • Müller, Thomas, 1969-
    • Placek, Tomasz, 1960-

    Genres

    • Manuscripts (Documents)
    • Correspondence
    • Lecture notes
    • Articles
    • Faculty papers
    • Letters of recommendation

    Other Subjects

    • Philosophers -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh
    • Philosophy -- Study and teaching (Higher)
    • Philosophy -- Research
    • Logic -- Research
    • Metaphysics -- Research
    • College teachers -- Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh

Container List