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ho.history overview - Why did Alonzo Church choose the letter $\lambda$ as the "binding operator"? - MathOverflow

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Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. Is there any known reason why Alonzo Church chose Greek 𝜆 𝜆 as the "binding operator" for the Lambda Calculus? This question has been answered on math.SE (as pointed out by Joel David Hamkins). With a reference to Lambda-Calculus and Combinators in the 20th Century by Felice Cardone and J. Roger Hindley, Handbook of the History of Logic Volume 5, 2009, Pages 723–817, it is stated that “ 𝜆𝑥 𝜆 𝑥 ” comes from “ 𝑥 ̂  𝑥 ^ ” in Principia Mathematica. Here is a quote from a preprint of Lambda-Calculus and Combinators in the 20th Century: By the way, why did Church choose the notation “ 𝜆 𝜆 ”? In [A. Church, 7 July 1964. Unpublished letter to Harald Dickson, §2] he stated clearly that it came from the notation “ 𝑥 ̂  𝑥 ^ ” used for class-abstraction by Whitehead and Russell, by first mo

ho.history overview - Why did Alonzo Church choose the letter $\lambda$ as the "binding operator"? - MathOverflow Why did Alonzo Church choose the letter $\lambda$ as the "binding operator"? Ask Question Asked 12 years, 6 months ago Modified 10 years, 1 month ago Viewed 1k times 11 $\begingroup$ Is there any known reason why Alonzo Church chose Greek $\lambda$ as the "binding operator" for the Lambda Calculus? ho.history-overview lambda-calculus Share Cite Improve this question Follow asked Dec 19, 2013 at 13:41 Alexey Muranov 1,521 13 13 silver badges 29 29 bronze badges $\endgroup$ 2 7 $\beg

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