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Kurt Gödel
Kurt Friedrich Gödel was a logician, mathematician, cosmologist, and philosopher. Considered along with Aristotle and Gottlob Frege to be one of the most significant logicians in history, Gödel profoundly influenced scientific and philosophical thinking in the 20th century, building on earlier work by Frege, Richard Dedekind, and Georg Cantor.
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science · Mathematician and philosopher (1906–1978) · mathematician · university teacher · computer scientist · physicist · also Kurt Gödel, Gödel
Born 28 April 1906 · Died 14 January 1978 · Q41390
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The completeness theorem, mathematically, is indeed an almost trivial consequence of Skolem 1923a. However, the fact is that, at that time, nobody (including Skolem himself) drew this conclusion (neither from Skolem 1923a nor, as I did, from similar considerations of his own).
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But every error is due to extraneous factors (such as emotion and education); reason itself does not err.
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2026· 1 entry
1987· 1 entry
Is an international organization for the promotion of research in logic, philosophy, and the history of mathematics
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1981· 1 entry
Donating Gödel's papers to the Institute for Advanced Study upon her death
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1978· 9 entries
Died 1978-01-14.
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“Ninety percent of [contemporary philosophers] see their principal task as that of beating religion out of men's heads. … We are far from being able to provide scientific basis for the theological world view.”
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“Religions are, for the most part, bad-but religion is not.”
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“There are other worlds and rational beings of a different and higher kind. The world in which we live is not the only one in which we shall live or have lived.”
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“The meaning of the world is the separation of wish and fact. Wish is a force as applied to thinking beings, to realize something. A fulfilled wish is a union of wish and fact. The meaning of the whole world is the separation and the union of fact and wish.”
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“Either mathematics is too big for the human mind, or the human mind is more than a machine.”
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“But every error is due to extraneous factors (such as emotion and education); reason itself does not err.”
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“The completeness theorem, mathematically, is indeed an almost trivial consequence of Skolem 1923a. However, the fact is that, at that time, nobody (including Skolem himself) drew this conclusion (neither from Skolem 1923a nor, as I did, from similar considerations of his own).”
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“I like Islam, it is a consistent idea of religion and open-minded.”
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1974· 1 entry
Won National Medal of Science (1974).
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1968· 1 entry
Awarded Foreign Member of the Royal Society (1968).
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1961· 1 entry
And a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1968
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1951· 3 entries
Awarded Albert Einstein Award (1951).
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Awarded Josiah Willard Gibbs Lectureship (1951).
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And the National Medal of Science in 1974
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1949· 1 entry
Demonstrated the existence of solutions involving closed timelike curves, to Einstein's field equations in general relativity
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1948· 1 entry
After World War II, at age 42, he became a U
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1947· 1 entry
Einstein and Morgenstern accompanied Gödel to his U
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1938· 1 entry
Gödel automatically became a German citizen at age 32
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1934· 1 entry
Gödel gave a series of lectures at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, New Jersey, titled On undecidable propositions of formal mathematical systems
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1933· 2 entries
Gödel first traveled to the U
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Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, and over the following years the Nazis rose in influence in Austria and among Vienna's mathematicians
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1932· 1 entry
And in 1933 became a Privatdozent (unpaid lecturer) there
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1930· 2 entries
Gödel attended the Second Conference on the Epistemology of the Exact Sciences, held in Königsberg on September 5–7
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And his thesis (accompanied by additional work) was published by the Vienna Academy of Science
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1929· 4 entries
Aged 23, he completed his doctoral dissertation under Hans Hahn's supervision
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Gödel met Adele Nimbursky (née Porkert), a divorcee living with her parents across the street from him
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As part of his dissertation to earn a doctorate at the University of Vienna, and the publication of Gödel's incompleteness theorems two years later, in 1931
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Studied at University of Vienna (1923–1929).
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1928· 1 entry
Hilbert and Wilhelm Ackermann published Grundzüge der theoretischen Logik (Principles of Mathematical Logic), an introduction to first-order logic in which the problem of completeness was posed: "Are the axioms of a form
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1920· 1 entry
His older brother Rudolf left for Vienna, where he attended medical school at the University of Vienna
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1906· 2 entries
In Brünn, Austria-Hungary (now Brno, Czech Republic), into the German-speaking family of Rudolf Gödel, the managing director and part owner of a major textile firm, and Marianne Gödel (née Handschuh)
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Born 1906-04-28.
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