Knights of the Lambda Calculus

An organisation of wizardly LISP and Scheme hackers. The name refers to a mathematical formalism invented by Alonzo Church, with which LISP is intimately connected. There is no enrollment list and the criteria for induction are unclear.

The Knights of the Lambda Calculus is a "semi-fictional" organization of expert LISP and Scheme hackers. The name refers to the lambda calculus, a mathematical formalism invented by Alonzo Church, with which LISP is intimately connected, and references the Knights Templar.

It mostly only exists as a hacker culture in-joke. The concept most likely originated at MIT. For example, in the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs video lectures, one of the lecturers presents the audience with the button, saying they are now members of this special group. However, a "well-known LISPer" has been known to give out buttons with Knights insignia on them, and some people have claimed to have membership in the Knights.

Alonzo Church
Born June 14, 1903, in Washington, D.C. American logician and mathematician.

Church was a professor at Princeton University from 1947 to 1967, when he became a professor of mathematics and philosophy at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Church’s works deal with various branches of logic. He developed the notion of separating the concept of function from that of set. In 1936 he advanced the fundamental hypothesis of the theory of computable functions; now known as Church’s thesis, it states that every effectively computable function is general recursive (seeRECURSIVE FUNCTION). In 1935, Church adduced an example of an undecidable queue problem, and in 1936 he proved that the decision problem for predicate calculus is unsolvable. These results greatly influenced the development of mathematical logic. Church also made an important contribution to the development of combinatory logic and carried out research in logical semantics and modal logic.