History of the Church–Turing thesis

The history of the Church–Turing thesis ("thesis") involves the history of the development of the study of the nature of functions whose values are effectively calculable; or, in more modern terms, functions whose values are algorithmically computable. It is an important topic in modern mathematical theory and computer science, particularly associated with the work of Alonzo Church and Alan Turing.

The debate and discovery of the meaning of "computation" and "recursion" has been long and contentious. This article provides detail of that debate and discovery from Peano's axioms in 1889 through recent discussion of the meaning of "axiom".