INTRODUCTION
The Lambda Calculus was developed by the logician Alonzo Church
in the 1930s as a foundation for mathematics. It is the inspiration
for the programming language LISP, and the basis for much of
the field of functional programming. It also turns out to be
quite useful for denotational semantics, so it is clearly important
for this class.
We will notate the "lambda symbol" like this "\".
Some examples of formula in the lambda calculus are:
\x.x
\xy.x
\f.(\x.f(xx))(\x.f(xx))
This presentation will closely follow that of
"Programming Language Theory and Its Implementation"
Michael J C Gordon; Prentice-Hall, New York, 1988.
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