Discovery and Evolution of Natural Deduction

Abstract

In 1934 Jaśkowski and Gentzen independently published the first work on natural deduction. Since then a lot of work has been done on both practical and theoretical aspects of natural deduction, but the original ideas of both authors are still alive and involved in recent work. In this survey paper we characterize the general idea of natural deduction, briefly compare the original systems of Jaśkowski and Gentzen, and sketch the main lines of later developments.