Myhill on Chomsky

[Jose-Luis Mendivil Giro]

John Myhill gave us the following information:

>Relating to the comment from AR (beaumar at HOTMAIL.COM, copied below), my
>father, a mathematical logician of the same name as me, met and spent a
>year around Chomsky at Princeton in the late 1950's, when Chomsky was
>attempting to pass himself off as a mathematician. The real mathematicians
>there observed with
>amusement that Chomsky would attempt to act like a mathematician, throwing
>around terms designed to impress, when speaking to philosophers, political
>scientists, etc., but when a real mathematician entered the conversation,
>Chomsky would either making an excuse to leave or change the topic to
>something like politics.
>
>John

If this kind of information is considered useful in order to evaluate the
validity of the Chomskyan program, I think the following will serve as well:

"For years now, Chomsky has been one of the very few scientists and
philosophers who is widely read. The number of citations of his work in the
Arts and Humanities Citation Index (nearly 4.000 between 1980 and early
1992) makes him the most cited living person and the eighth overall (...),
and the citations of his work in the Social Science Citation Index (7.499
between 1972 and early 1992) are likely to make him the most cited living
person there as well. Last, but certainly not least, from 1974 to 1992 he
was cited 1.619 times in the Science Citation Index" (I quote from the
Foreword to _Noam Chomsky. Critical Assessments_, Routledge, London & New
York, 1994: p. xxii)

It seems quite exaggerated for a false mathematician!

Best Regards,
Jose-Luis