Lurch Plus is the offical home of the Lurch proof verification project and its applications. In addition to housing the latest official version of the Lurch web application (coauthored with Nathan Carter), it also contains supporting topics, content, course materials and assignments from my undergraduate Introduction to Proof course and other Lurch related goodies.
In 1995, I was teaching my undergraduate course on Chaos and Fractals, and at that time our department did not offer a bridge course to introduce students to mathematical proofs. To address this, I began the course with an introduction to mathematical proof, using a modified version of Gentzen's natural deduction. During the course, one of my students, Nathan Carter, asked if it was possibile to develop a computer program to verify such proofs. This led to collaborative discussions and the initial design and implementation of a few simple tools before Nathan graduated and went off to graduate school in mathematics.
Years later we revisited the project, and in 2008 we were awarded an NSF grant (NSF DUE CCLI grant #0736644) to develop the first version of the software. This desktop application, also known as Lurch, became a key part of my Introduction to Proof classes and the Prove It! mathematics summer program.
Building on lessons learned from the initial version, we completely redesigned Lurch, transforming it into the modern web application it is today. In Spring 2024, I introduced the new version of Lurch in my Introduction to Proof course, and it was met with great success.
The origin story of the name actually involves a computer algebra system, types of trees (the plants, not the discrete structures), and a Monty Python skit.
Back in the 1990's, Nathan and I were brainstorming designs for an application that would be an "expert system for verifying mathematical proofs analogous to the way the Maple CAS is an expert system for doing algebraic computations". To distinguish the designs from each other and from Maple we named them after other trees besides Maple - Elm, Oak, Ash, Pine - you get the idea.
We eventually named one after a particular tree that was made humorously famous by a Monty Python sketch - the Larch. But as the design evolved, we made a small adjustment and decided the result needed a slightly modified name. Enter Lurch. The name stuck, and we really can't imagine calling it anything else at this point.