Editing Primitive recursive function (section)

== History ==
[[Recursive definition]]s had been used more or less formally in mathematics before, but the construction of primitive recursion is traced back to [[Richard Dedekind]]'s theorem 126 of his ''Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen?'' (1888). This work was the first to give a proof that a certain recursive construction defines a unique function.<ref name="Smith2013">{{citation|author=Peter Smith|title=An Introduction to Gödel's Theorems|year=2013|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-107-02284-3|pages=98–99|edition=2nd |url=https://www.logicmatters.net/igt/}}</ref><ref name="Tourlakis2003">{{citation|author=George Tourlakis|title=Lectures in Logic and Set Theory: Volume 1, Mathematical Logic|year=2003|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-139-43942-8|page=129}}</ref><ref name="Downey2014">{{citation|editor=Rod Downey|title=Turing's Legacy: Developments from Turing's Ideas in Logic|year=2014|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-107-04348-0|page=474}}</ref>

[[Primitive recursive arithmetic]]  was first proposed by [[Thoralf Skolem]]<ref>[[Thoralf Skolem]] (1923) "The foundations of elementary arithmetic" in [[Jean van Heijenoort]], translator and ed. (1967) ''From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in Mathematical Logic, 1879-1931''. Harvard Univ. Press: 302-33.</ref> in 1923.

The current terminology was coined by [[Rózsa Péter]] (1934) after [[Wilhelm Ackermann|Ackermann]] had proved in 1928 that the function which today is named after him was not primitive recursive, an event which prompted the need to rename what until then were simply called recursive functions.<ref name="Tourlakis2003"/><ref name="Downey2014"/>