In 1981 the editor of this bibliography was attracted to the
Busy Beaver Problem by a reference in the Dutch translation of
Ogilvy's Tomorrow's Math. Tracing back in time one finds
of course Rado's publication “On non-computable
functions”. The course of events since then is not always
easy to trace. In the period 1962-1989 there were many successive
high tides and low tides in the research efforts and in the
results thereof. Moreover, researchers sometimes worked in
isolation, and were unaware of the results of one another, though
it seems most of the researchers involved live in the Federal
Republic of Germany and the United States of America.
Literature search via e.g. Science Citation Index and via
personal correspondence with some of the researchers in this
field, gradually did result in this list of articles, books,
reports and theses. Separately, reviews in Computing Reviews
(CR), in the Journal of Symbolic Logic (JSL), in Mathematical
Reviews (MR), and in the Zentralblatt für Mathematik und
ihre Grenzgebiete (Zbl) are listed. A review between brackets
contains nothing more than the author's summary.
Most of this bibliography was compiled before 1986. Only a few
entries have been added haphazardly since then.