  The Cook-Reckhow 1979 paper defined the area of research we now call Proof
Complexity. There were earlier papers which contributed to the subject as we
understand it today, the most significant being Tseitin's 1968 paper, but none
of them introduced general notions that would allow to make an explicit and
universal link between lengths-of-proofs problems and computational complexity
theory. In this note we shall highlight three particular definitions from the
paper: of proof systems, p-simulations and the pigeonhole principle formula,
and discuss their role in defining the field. We will also mention some related
developments and open problems.
