Logician Kurt Gödel: A Biography Of “Mr.Why “

Logician Kurt Gödel is without a doubt one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. One could say that thanks to his contribution, the inherent errors in the mathematical foundations that applied at his time were exposed. He not only revealed that there were contradictions in the knowledge of mathematicians at that time, but he also showed that logic has great limitations.

This brilliant scientist is living proof that reason and lack of reason can clearly coexist. Both in theory and in people’s real lives.

Kurt Gödel was an incredibly ingenious man, but he also had completely irrational beliefs. He was both ingenious and paranoid and in him lived intelligence and madness at the same time.

In other words, Kurt Gödel demonstrated that we cannot prove all mathematical truths. Or, as an article from the BBC put it: “What Gödel did was to use mathematics to prove that mathematics cannot prove everything in mathematics”.

It therefore follows from this premise that there are truths, mathematical or not, that are not actually provable, even though they may be true.

Logician Kurt Gödel : Mr. Why

It was his own family who gave him the nickname “Mr. Why ”. Kurt Gödel was always a person who had an unbridled curiosity about the world he lived in. He wanted to know everything about everything and find explanations for everything that surrounded him. That’s why he kept asking questions. And that’s how he got his famous nickname.

He was born on April 28, 1906, in a town called Brünn, which at the time belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Later it became known as Czechoslovakia. Today it is part of the Czech Republic. Nationality issues were something that Gödel had a very hard time dealing with.

He came from a German family and did not speak Czech. When the empire was dissolved, he became a Czech citizen overnight. Because he did not feel connected to that nation, he decided to become an Austrian citizen in 1923. Later, Germany annexed Austria, making him a German citizen. After World War II, he finally became a US citizen.

Gödel’s fantastic work

Before Gödel made his entrance into mathematics, this was a scientific field that claimed absolute certainty. In other words, it was a field that had what all scientists were looking for: the truth. This seemed to be an indisputable fact until the cracks began to appear.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the mathematician Georg Cantor had already cast some doubt. These doubts were also fueled by Russell’s paradoxes .

Then David Hilbert, a well-known mathematician, set out to prove that his science rested on well-founded foundations. He tried in every way until Kurt Gödel appeared with his thesis. This essay clearly showed that this was not the case.

Kurt Gödel graduated with the highest grade at the University of Vienna. It was in his dissertation, which only covered 11 pages, that he presented his incompleteness theorems. Using mathematics, he succeeded in proving that there will always be at least one hypothesis that we cannot prove, even if it is true.

In 1936, one of his teachers was murdered by a Nazi. As a result of this incident, Gödel had a nervous breakdown and came to spend some time in various psychiatric institutions.

Logician Kurt Gödel and his many years of work

In 1938, Kurt Gödel married Adele Nimbursky. She previously worked as a dancer and was six years older than Gödel, with whom she lived until his death.

The year after his marriage, he was called up for military service by the Nazis. However, the couple decided to flee to the United States and they made the tiring journey via the Trans-Siberian Railway. They arrived at Princeton, where Gödel resumed his work.

His friendship with Albert Einstein is widely known. They were often seen on the campus, where they took evening walks together and chatted endlessly.

Gödel was also a prominent philosopher, and his mathematical knowledge and philosophical reflections led him to write “Gödel’s ontological evidence”. This postulate is an attempt to prove the existence of God.

For much of his life, Gödel was plagued by persecution mania and depressive conditions. It is very possible that the realization that all these “truths” could be questioned affected his mental health.

In addition, he was convinced that someone was trying to poison him. Therefore, he ate only what his wife cooked for him. But then his wife became ill and was hospitalized for six months. Sadly, this incomparable genius died of starvation during this time.