The Theorem Prover Museum

Theorem provers are software systems that can find or check proofs for conjectures given in some logic. Research in theorem proving system started with the logical theorist 1955 and has led to a succession of systems since.

Theorem provers are complex software systems that have pushed the envelope of artificial intelligence and programming, and as such they constitute important cultural artefacts.

With the current wave of retirements of the original principal investigators there is good chance that the systems are lost, when their group servers are shut down. This web site aims to preserve the ones we can still get our hands on. This idea is compatible with the Software Heritage initiative, and contributes since it is based on GitHub repositories.

The term “museum” may be sound bit ambitious, since the exhibition and didactic interpretation of the theorem provers is beyond our scope (and perhaps abilities). But the foremost function of a museum is the conservation of artefacts, which is what the “theorem prover museum” project intends to do.

This site is the front-end to a collection of source code repositories for theorem provers (see below). Note that it is not the purpose of this site to keep the theorem proving systems running (in many cases the compilers and dependencies have moved on, making this very difficult), but only to archive the source code for academic study and aggregate meta-data about the systems. In particular this should lower the barrier of archiving systems here.

See also most wanted list, systems believed lost, active provers, how to contribute, Community, project/issues.

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Encyclopedia of proof systems, Wikipedia page, … more.

All theorem provers start out as active systems, eventually development gets discontinued as developers retire or move to newer systems. Therefore we also maintain a list of source code repositories of active theorem provers.

Theorem Provers

There are 42 provers in the listing below.

IMPS

The IMPS Theorem Prover.

authors:William M. Farmer, Joshua D. Guttman, F. Javier Thayer
language:Scheme, Common Lisp
MKRP

The Markgraph Karl Refutation Procedure, a graph-based resolution theorem prover

authors:Jörg Siekmann, Jürgen Ohlbach, Axel Präcklein
language:Common Lisp (CLOS)
OMEGA

A theorem prover for higher-order logic based on proof planning.

authors:Jörg Siekmann, Detlef Fehrer, Christoph Benzmüller, Michael Kohlhase, Manfred Kerber
language:Common Lisp (CLOS)
InKa

An Inductive Theorem Prover

authors:Dieter Hutter
Otter

The first theorem prover for first-order logic with equality from the Argonne group that was widely distributed.

authors:William McCune
language:C
Mace

The Argonne Model generator.

authors:William McCune
language:C
Prover9

Prover9 is the successor to Otter

authors:William McCune
language:C
Mace4

Mace4 is the successor of Mace.

authors:William McCune
language:C
PRESS

The Prolog Equation Solving System (PRESS) pioneered work on what is now called proof planning.

authors:Alan Bundy
language:Prolog
LCF77

The original Edinburgh LCF

authors:Robin Milner
development:1972-1977
TPS

TPS is an interactive, semi-automatic, and automatic Theorem Proving System for first-order logic and higher-order logic.

authors:Peter Andreas, Frank Pfenning, Dale Miller, Sunil Issar, Hongwei Xi, Mathhew Bishop, Chad Brown
language:Comon Lisp
ETPS

ETPS is a subsystem of TPS designed for interactive use by students in logic courses.

authors:Peter Andreas, Frank Pfenning, Dale Miller, Sunil Issar
language:Common Lisp
HOL88

The HOL System is an environment for interactive theorem proving in a higher-order logic. Its most outstanding feature is its high degree of programmability through the meta-language ML.

authors:Mike Gordon, Tom Melham, and numerous other contributors
HOL90

The rational reconstruction of HOL88

authors:Konrad Slind, Graham Birtwistle
SNARK

SRIs New Automated Reasoning Kit

authors:Mark Stickel
Repository: R1
PRV

an early theorem prover written in SNOBOL

authors:Wolfgang Bibel
language:SNOBOL
OSHL

A general-purpose instance-based first-order automated theorem proving algorithm

CLIN

A Semantically Guided First-Order Theorem Prover

NQTHM

An improved version of the original Boyer-Moore theorem prover

Repository: R1
clam2

A Prolog implementation of the proof planner Clam (in the clam2 development branch) and the associated theorem prover, oyster.

authors:Alan Bundy
language:Prolog
Clam 3

Prolog implementation of proof planner with critics, and some higher-order unification, in the v3 branch of Clam.

language:Prolog
LambdaClam

A proof planning system that support proof planning over higher-order domains.

DISCOUNT

A Distributed and Learning Equational Prover.

scunac

A proof checker and interactive theorem prover for dependently typed set theory.

authors:Chad Brown
SETHEO

A first-order theorem prover based on the connection method.

authors:Johann Schumann, Wolfgang Bibel
ProCom

A theorem prover based on the PTTP paradigm.

home page:http://koralle.htwk-leipzig.de/ProCom/index.html
authors:Gerd Neugebauer, Uwe Petermann
development:1992-1995
license:GPL V1
language:(ECLiPSe) Prolog
Logic Theorist

The first theorem prover by Newell and Simon.

authors:Alan Newell, Herbert Simon
Oleg

home page:http://strictlypositive.org/samizdat.html
authors:Conor McBride
language:Standard ML and LEGO
Repository: R1
RDL

Rewrite and Decision Procedure Laboratory

authors:Alessandro Armando, Luca Compagna, Silvio Ranise
license:GPL 3.0
language:Prolog
Repository: R1
PLTP

authors:J Strother Moore, Robert S. Boyer (Grant O. Passmore: OCaml Reimplementation)
development:1972/3
language:Pure Lisp
note:the code is still linked from the ACL github repository.
EQP

The prover of the Robbins Conjecture

home page:http://www.cs.unm.edu/~mccune/eqp/
wikipedia:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EQP
authors:William McCune
language:C
LEGO

an early interactive proof development system for various type theories

home page:http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/home/lego/
wikipedia:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LEGO_(proof_assistant)
authors:Randy Pollack
development:<= 1999
note:See http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/rpollack/bibfile.html ​for some old documents.
Cambridge LCF

Edinburgh LCF re-implemented in Standard ML

authors:Konrad Slind
development:1980-1985
language:Standard ML
Aquarius

a Clause-Diffusion parallelization of Otter 2.2 for workstation networks

home page:http://profs.sci.univr.it/~bonacina/cdprovers.html
authors:Maria Paola Bonacina
development:1992 - 1992
language:C, PCN
Peers

a Clause-Diffusion prover parallelizing Otter Parts Store code for equational theories (modulo AC)

home page:http://profs.sci.univr.it/~bonacina/cdprovers.html
authors:Maria Paola Bonacina, William W. McCune
development:1993 - 1995
language:C, p4
Peers-mcd.a

a Modified-Clause-Diffusion prover parallelizing Otter Parts Store code for equational theories (modulo AC)

home page:http://profs.sci.univr.it/~bonacina/cdprovers.html
authors:Maria Paola Bonacina
development:1995 - 1996
language:C, p4
Peers-mcd.b

a Modified-Clause-Diffusion parallelization of EQP 0.9 for either workstation networks or multi-processors

home page:http://profs.sci.univr.it/~bonacina/cdprovers.html
authors:Maria Paola Bonacina
development:1996 - 1999
language:C, MPI
Peers-mcd.c

a Modified-Clause-Diffusion parallelization of EQP 0.9d for workstation networks

home page:http://profs.sci.univr.it/~bonacina/cdprovers.html
authors:Maria Paola Bonacina
development:1999 - 2000
language:C, MPI
Peers-mcd.d

a Modified-Clause-Diffusion plus multi-search parallelization of EQP 0.9d for workstation networks

home page:http://profs.sci.univr.it/~bonacina/cdprovers.html
authors:Maria Paola Bonacina, Javeed Chida
development:2000 - 2001
language:C, MPI
HipSpec

Automated induction and theory exploration for Haskell programs.

authors:Dan Rosén, Nicholas Smallbone, Moa Johansson, Koen Claessen
development:2011 - 2014
language:Haskell
Repository: R1
note:A sister system to Hipster, using the same backend for conjecture discovery (QuickSpec) but for Haskell programs.
IsaPlanner (with IsaCoSy)

A proof planner for Isabelle/HOL focusing on automated induction.

authors:Lucas Dixon, Moa Johansson (+ possibly others too)
development:approx. 2000 - 2015.
language:Poly ML
Repository: R1
note:The theory exploration system IsaCoSy exists in the same repo (see synthesis directory).
SEQUEL

For generating type-secure and efficient Lisp programs.

home page:https://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang/lisp/code/tools/sequel/0.html
authors:Mark Tarver
development:1990-1994
language:Common Lisp