Logic List Mailing Archive

Mike Yates (1939-2020)

*Obituary for Mike Yates*
   by Jeff Paris

   Professor C.E.M. Yates, Mike to all who knew him, died on the 21st of 
December 2020 in Bangor, North Wales, at the age of 81. He achieved a 
first class honours degree in Mathematics at Manchester University, 
remaining there for a doctorate on the topic of Turing Degrees of 
Unsolvability. Formally his supervisor and general mentor was Robin Gandy, 
though in fact the direction of his studies was wholly initiated by John 
Shepherdson along with distant mentoring by Martin Davis. Robin did 
however put him in touch with Gerald Sacks with whom he worked closely for 
many years. After receiving his doctorate in 1963 he held a Fulbright 
Scholarship for a year at Cornell and then another at the Institute of 
Advanced Study at Princeton. He then returned to Manchester as a lecturer 
and in rapid steps rose to a full professorship in 1978. He remained at 
Manchester until 1989 during which time he was highly instrumental in 
building up the Logic Group to one of the best in the country.

     Over the course of this period his research continued to focus very 
largely on Recursion Theory, in particular he wrote seminal papers on 
recursively enumerable degrees, initial segments of the degrees of 
unsolvability and the application of the priority method.  He is probably 
best known for his Minimal Pairs Theorem (proved independently by Alistair 
Lachlan). He later (2001) made a further, highly significant as it was to 
turn out, contribution to this and the wider area by editing with Robin 
Gandy the final fourth volume of Turing's *Complete Works.*

     After leaving Manchester he spent periods at Leeds Metropolitan 
University and Liverpool John Moores University where he developed a keen 
interest in Computer Assisted Learning. This led to his working at the 
multimedia company Amaze Ltd in Liverpool until 1999 and subsequently 
contributing to the Centre for the Popularisation of Mathematics being 
promoted by Ronald Brown at Bangor.

     Outside of mathematics he was a distinguished rock climber, even as a 
student being a team member of several first climbs in the Lake District.

     Mike will be remembered with affection by all who knew him: caring, 
generous and greatly supportive of his students and colleagues and the 
discipline.

--
[LOGIC] mailing list
http://www.dvmlg.de/mailingliste.html
Archive: http://www.illc.uva.nl/LogicList/

provided by a collaboration of the DVMLG, the Maths Departments in Bonn and Hamburg, and the ILLC at the Universiteit van Amsterdam