Special Issue on the Occasion of Johan van Benthem’s 60th Birthday—Editorial

Abstract

This issue of the Journal of Philosophical Logic is in honour of Johan van Benthem’s 60th birthday, the 12th of June 2009. Johan has been at the top of his profession for many years, and has contributed to a wide array of areas in logic, mathematics, computer science, game theory, linguistics, and even history of logic: when the history of our period is written, it will surely highlight the pioneering connections forged by Johan van Benthem between logicians in the West and those in India and China. Within logic, the areas to which he has contributed are many. Let us not try to enumerate them. Given the speed with which Johan continues to turn out reports, articles, and books, the research community can look forward to benefit from Johan’s research for very many more years. The benefits are not restricted to reading his innumerable works. Quite to the contrary. Instead, in this short editorial to the special issue, let us shortly commemorate how people benefit from Johan’s attention. He has had at least 61 PhD students. Being a PhD student of Johan means being advised often and in detail, and being advised well, and still keeping the feeling that as a student you make your own research contributions. The ideas are merely planted into your head to sprout and grow so that they after all become your own. As a result, many of his students have gone on to strong careers of their own; the identity of their advisor can be long lost to common knowledge, but this only J Philos Logic (2009) 38:587–588 DOI 10.1007/s10992-009-9119-5