Gerhard Gentzen was born in 1909, in Greifswald Germany.
In 1933 he was awarded his doctorate from the University of Göttingen, having studied under David Hilbert among others. He stayed on at Göttingen, and became Hilbert's assistant in 1934.
Between 1939 and 1941 he had to undertake miltary service, but despite this still managed to submit his Habilitation thesis; an extra post-doctoral qualification needed to lecture at a German university.
He was forced to lecture at the University of Prague at the end of World War II. When the citizens of Prague revolted against the occupying German forces in May 1945, Gentzen was held under internment. He died of malnutrition 3 months later.
Gentzen is probably best known for developing Natural Deduction; a treatment of first-order logic. It is still popular today in Propositional and Predicate Calculus, for example being used in Formal Methods.