Herbert Kenneth Kunen (August 2, 1943 – August 14, 2020[1]) was a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison[2] who worked in set theory and its applications to various areas of mathematics, such as set-theoretic topology and measure theory.

He also worked on non-associative algebraic systems, such as loops, and used computer software, such as the Otter theorem prover, to derive theorems in these areas.

Kunen was born in New York City in 1943 and died in 2020.

[1] He lived in Madison, Wisconsin, with his wife Anne, with whom he had two sons, Isaac and Adam.

[3] Kunen completed his undergraduate degree at the California Institute of Technology[3] and received his Ph.D. in 1968 from Stanford University, where he was supervised by Dana Scott.

is a strongly compact cardinal then there is an inner model of set theory with

He proved Kunen's inconsistency theorem showing the impossibility of a nontrivial elementary embedding

Away from the area of large cardinals, Kunen is known for intricate forcing and combinatorial constructions.

He proved that it is consistent that Martin's axiom first fails at a singular cardinal and constructed under the continuum hypothesis a compact L-space supporting a nonseparable measure.

The journal Topology and its Applications has dedicated a special issue to "Ken" Kunen,[3] containing a biography by Arnold W. Miller, and surveys about Kunen's research in various fields by Mary Ellen Rudin, Akihiro Kanamori, István Juhász, Jan van Mill, Dikran Dikranjan, and Michael Kinyon.