Stephen Cole Kleene (January 5, 1909, Hartford, Connecticut, USA – January 25, 1994, Madison, Wisconsin) was an American mathematician who helped lay the foundations for theoretical computer science. One of many distinguished students of Alonzo Church, Kleene, along with Alan Turing, Emil Post, and others, is best known as a founder of the branch of mathematical logic known as recursion theory. Kleene's work grounds the study of which functions are computable. A number of mathematical concepts are named after him: Kleene hierarchy, Kleene algebra, the Kleene star (Kleene closure), Kleene's recursion theorem and the Kleene fixpoint theorem. He also invented regular expressions, and was a leading American advocate of mathematical intuitionism.
Kleene pronounced his last name /ˈkleɪniː/ KLAY-nee; /ˈkliːniː/ and /ˈkliːn/ are common mispronunciations. (His son, Ken Kleene, wrote: "As far as I am aware this pronunciation is incorrect in all known languages. I believe that this novel pronunciation was invented by my father.")
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