Hilbert

If the life of any 20th century mathematician can be said to be a history of mathematics in his time, it is that of David Hilbert. To the enchanted young mathematicians and physicists who flocked to study with him in Gottingen before and between the World Wars, he seemed mathematics personified, the very air around him "scientifically electric." His remarkably prescient proposal in 1900 of twenty-three problems for the coming century set the course of much subsequent mathematics and remains a feat that no scientist in any field has been able to duplicate. When he died, Nature remarked that there was scarcely a mathematician in the world whose work did not derive from that of Hilbert. Constance Reid's classic biography is a moving, nontechnical account of the passionate scientific life of this man - from the early days in Konigsberg, when his revolutionary work was dismissed as "theology," to the golden years in Gottingen before Hitler came to power and within a few months destroyed the entire Hilbert school. The Copernicus paperback edition makes this book available to new generations of mathematicians who know the name Hilbert, which is everywhere in mathematics, but do not know the man. Front Matter....Pages N2-XI Youth....Pages 1-8 Friends and Teachers....Pages 9-14 Doctor of Philosophy....Pages 15-21 Paris....Pages 22-27 Gordan’s Problem....Pages 28-38 Changes....Pages 39-46 Only Number Fields....Pages 47-56 Tables, Chairs, and Beer Mugs....Pages 57-64 Problems....Pages 65-73 The Future of Mathematics....Pages 74-83 The New Century....Pages 84-90 Second Youth....Pages 91-101 The Passionate Scientific Life....Pages 102-110 Space, Time and Number....Pages 111-116 Friends and Students....Pages 117-124 Physics....Pages 125-136 War....Pages 137-147 The Foundations of Mathematics....Pages 148-157 The New Order....Pages 158-167 The Infinite!....Pages 168-177 Borrowed Time....Pages 178-189 Logic and the Understanding of Nature....Pages 190-197 Exodus....Pages 198-205 Age....Pages 206-215 The Last Word....Pages 216-244 David Hilbert and His Mathematical Work....Pages 245-283 Back Matter....Pages 285-290 The fortuitous combination of genes that produces an unusually gifted individual was effected by Otto Hilbert and his wife Maria sometime in the spring of 1861; and on January 23, 1862, at one o'clock in the afternoon, their first child was born in Wehlau, near Konigsberg, the capital of East Prussia.