X-Nico

3 unusual facts about Maurice Karnaugh


Edward W. Veitch

Maurice Karnaugh, November 1953, The Map Method for Synthesis of Combinational Logic Circuits, AIEE Committee on Technical Operations for presentation at the AIEE summer General Meeting, Atlantic City, N. J., June 15–19, 1953, pp.

In his 1952 paper "A Chart Method for Simplifying Truth Functions", Veitch described a graphical procedure for the optimization of logic circuits, a year later (1953) refined in a paper by Maurice Karnaugh into what is now known as the Karnaugh map method.

Propositional formula

Willard Quine 1952 and 1955, E. W. Veitch 1952, and M. Karnaugh (1953) develop map-methods for simplifying propositional functions.


Euler diagram

Thus the matter would rest until 1952 when Maurice Karnaugh (1924– ) would adapt and expand a method proposed by Edward W. Veitch; this work would rely on the truth table method precisely defined in Emil Post's 1921 PhD thesis "Introduction to a general theory of elementary propositions" and the application of propositional logic to switching logic by (among others) Claude Shannon, George Stibitz, and Alan Turing.


see also