. The majority of general purpose mechanised proof assistants support versions of typed higher order logic, even though set theory is the standard foundation for mathematics. For many applications higher order logic works well and provides, for specification, the benefits of type-checking that are well-known in programming. However, there are areas where types get in the way or seem unmotivated. Furthermore, most people with a scientific or engineering background already know set theory, but not higher order logic. This paper discusses some approaches to getting the best of both worlds: the expressiveness and standardness of set theory with the efficient treatment of functions provided by typed higher order logic. 1 Introduction Higher order logic is a successful and popular formalism for computer assisted reasoning. Proof systems based on higher order logic include ALF [18], Automath [20], Coq [9], EHDM [19], HOL [13], IMPS [10], LAMBDA [11], LEGO [17], Nuprl [6], PVS [22]...

Introduction The goal of this project was to demonstrate the feasibility of the independent and trusted validation of the proofs generated by existing theorem provers. Our intention was to design, implement and formally verify a proof checking program for HOL [5] generated proofs. A proof checker can be much simpler than a full theorem prover such as HOL as it is only concerned with checking existing proofs rather than searching for or generating them. Our work has clearly demonstrated the feasibility of this approach. In particular, the main achievements of the project are as follows. ffl We have developed a computer representation suitable for communicating large, formal, machine generated proofs. ffl We have modified the HOL system to allow primitive inference proofs to be recorded in the above format. ffl We have formalised, within the HOL theorem proving system, theories of higher-order logic, Hilb