Yuri Gurevich, Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, is an American computer scientist and mathematician and the inventor of abstract state machines. Gurevich was born and educated in the Soviet Union. He taught mathematics there and then in Israel before moving to the United States in 1982.The best-known work of his Soviet period is on the classical decision problem.In Israel, Gurevich worked with Saharon Shelah onmonadic second-order theories.The Forgetful Determinacy Theorem of Gurevich–Harrington is of that period as well.