In 1924, after ten years working with David Hilbert in Göttingen, Moses Schönfinkel published On the Building Blocks of Mathematical Logic. Mathematical functions, he showed, could be built from the S, K, and I combinators. This reductionist view of mathematics attracted little attention. He left for Moscow that same year without a PhD, later spent time in a sanatorium, and died in poverty. After his death, his unpublished manuscripts were burned by neighbors for warmth. In this talk, I will reanimate combinatory logic, the first universal model of computation, as an alternative foundation of differentiation systems. I will go through familiar differentiation problems without the familiar infinitesimal way of thinking. Then I will illustrate the practical implication of universality through its use in a compiler.
About the Speaker: 
Kangbo Li received his B.S. in Engineering Physics from UW–Madison and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University. His interests are in affordable energy and healthcare.
