Today. Friedberg’s initial words from 1958 “Machines would be more useful if they could learn to perform tasks for which they were not given precise methods” are the coin of the realm in computational intelligence. Entire disciplines of evolutionary computation are devoted to problems in automatic programming. Friedberg’s early work truly was a seminal contribution.[4]
Friedberg solved a theoretical problem in recursion theory called Post's problem. In computability theory there is the decision problem of whether a given number is in a given set. Turing degree is a measure of the computational challenge. In 1944 Emil Post asked whether intermediate degrees exist on a certain interval of the Turing scale.[8]Albert Muchnik (1956) and Friedberg (1957) proved the Friedberg–Muchnik theorem as the solution.[9]
In 1968 Friedberg wrote an informal book on number theory titled An Adventurer's Guide to Number Theory.[10] In the book, he states, "The difference between the theory of numbers and arithmetic is like the difference between poetry and grammar."
An 1840 work by Olinde Rodrigues has been reviewed by Friedberg who translated the work, provided modern vector notation, diagrams, and annotation of the text.[13]
1958: "Three theorems on recursive enumeration. I. Decomposition. II. Maximal set. III. Enumeration without duplication", Journal of Symbolic Logic 23(3): 309–316.
1973: "Frequency Shifts in Emission and Absorption by Resonant Systems of Two-Level Atoms", (with S. R. Hartmann and J. T. Manassah), Phys. Reports 7C, 101
1984: (with T. D. Lee) "Derivation of Regge’s Action from Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity", Nuclear Physics B 242, 145
1993: "The Electrostatics and Magnetostatics of a Conducting Disc", American Journal of Physics 61: 1084
1995: "Path Integrals in Polar Variables with Spontaneously Broken Symmetry", Journal of Mathematical Physics 36: 2675 doi:10.1063/1.531360
2005: (with S. Yancopoulos & O. Attie) "Efficient Sorting of Genomic Permutation by Translocation, inversion and block interchange", Bioinformatics 21: 3352–59 doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/bti535
^Year: 1940; Census Place: New York, New York, New York; Roll: m-t0627-02655; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 31-1314
^Bush, L. E. (1957). "The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition". The American Mathematical Monthly. 64 (1): 21–27. doi:10.2307/2309081. JSTOR2309081.
^Friedberg, Richard (2022). "Rodrigues, Olinde: "Des lois géométriques qui régissent les déplacements d'un système solide...", translation and commentary". arXiv:2211.07787 [math.HO].