I was describing compositionality to a retired physicist. He said it reminded him of Gabriel Kron’s work on systems analysis.
Kron developed a method of analyzing systems by “tearing” them into sections, solving the sections, and then combining the solutions to produce a solution to the system.
He was an interesting character who deserves to be celebrated more than he has been.
Kron’s books are long out of print and not easy to find. I’m trying to collect and digitize some of it. This repo is where I’m keeping notes and tooling for doing that.
Here are the books I’ve found so far:
1963, 166 pages. This is the only one I’ve yet scanned.
This is a Dover edition paperback.
This is not Kron’s own work, but rather a tribute by his friends and colleagues. Hardback.