German mathematician, one of the most influential of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, working chiefly at Gottingen. At the 1900 International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris he presented a list of twenty three unsolved problems that shaped mathematical research across the following century; Fermat's Last Theorem and the Riemann Hypothesis both appear on it. He championed formalism, the view that mathematics is fundamentally the manipulation of formal symbol systems by explicit rules, and proposed Hilbert's program to place all of mathematics on a finite, provably consistent axiomatic foundation, a project Godel's 1931 incompleteness theorems showed could not succeed in its original, most literal form.
Facts
BirthplaceKonigsberg, Kingdom of Prussia 1 Death PlaceGottingen, Nazi Germany 1 Nationality / Culture Defining ContributionThe 1900 list of 23 problems that shaped twentieth century mathematics; Hilbert spaces, foundational to functional analysis; the formalist program for the foundations of mathematics. 2 Notable WorkMathematische Probleme (1900, the 23 problems address); Grundlagen der Geometrie (1899) 2 Connections
Associated With
David Hilbert described the curve in 1891, refining Giuseppe Peano's 1890 space-filling curve.
Source Hilbert Curve (Wikipedia)
Source MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
Courant was Hilbert's assistant at Gottingen and took his 1910 doctorate under Hilbert's supervision; the two later co-authored Methods of Mathematical Physics.
Source Richard Courant (1888-1972), Biography (MacTutor History of Mathematics, University of St Andrews)
Source MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
In Branch
Source The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Source The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Source The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Namesake Of
Derived from the theorem's own name (unambiguous possessive-token match to exactly one live mathematician entity, w-bfill-g5-0924 browse backfill)
Derived from the theorem's own name (unambiguous possessive-token match to exactly one live mathematician entity, w-bfill-g5-0924 browse backfill)
Derived from the theorem's own name (unambiguous possessive-token match to exactly one live mathematician entity, w-bfill-g5-0924 browse backfill)
Derived from the object's own name (unambiguous possessive-token match to exactly one live mathematician entity, w-bfill-g5-0924 browse backfill)
Derived from the theorem's own name (unambiguous possessive-token match to exactly one live mathematician entity, w-bfill-g5-0924 browse backfill)
Derived from the theorem's own name (unambiguous possessive-token match to exactly one live mathematician entity, w-bfill-g5-0924 browse backfill)
Proofs Credited
In the Other Atlases
- Also in Geography Atlas: Germany, nationality there.
Sources
1. MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
University of St Andrews, School of Mathematics and StatisticsAssociated With: Logic and Foundations, https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Hilbert/
A systematic study of the axioms of Euclidean geometry led Hilbert to propose 21 such axioms and he analysed their significance.
Associated With: Ring (Abstract Algebra), https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/HistTopics/Ring_theory/
the word number ring (Zahlring) or ring is due to Hilbert
View the Source 2. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University
Richard Courant (1888-1972), Biography (MacTutor History of Mathematics, University of St Andrews)
MacTutor History of Mathematics, University of St AndrewsAssociated With: Richard CourantView the Source Hilbert Curve (Wikipedia)
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