Arnold Oberschelp (born 5 February 1932 in Recklinghausen) is a German mathematician and logician. He was for many years professor of logic and science theory[clarify] in Kiel.
Oberschelp studied mathematics and physics at the universities of Göttingen and Münster. In Münster he received in December 1957 his doctorate in mathematical logic under Hans Hermes.[1][2][3][4] In 1958 he was a research assistant at the Mathematical Institute of the Technical College of Hannover (now Leibniz University Hannover) where he habilitated in mathematics in 1961.[1][5] In 1968, he accepted an appointment as full professor of logic and science at the University of Kiel. Oberschelp has been emeritus professor since 1997.[6]
Arnold Oberschelp developed a general class logic in which arbitrary classes can be formed without the contradictions of naive set theory. Additional axioms result in the Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, which is much more handy in his class-logical representation than in the usual predicate logical representation.[7]
In 1962 he gave a lecture as an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Stockholm on classes as "primal elements" in set theory.
From 1970 to 1976 he was chairman of the Deutsche Vereinigung für mathematische Logik und für Grundlagenforschung der exakten Wissenschaften ,[8] on whose board he served from 1965 to 1978.
In September 2019, he received the German Institute for Standardization's Beuth Memorial Coin in recognition of his services to standardization in mathematics and technical foundations.[9]