Kurt Friedrich Gödel was a mathematical logician who proved perhaps the most influential theorem of 20th-century mathematics--the incompleteness theorem. Although he was not prolific in his published research and did not cultivate a group of students to carry on his work, his results have shaped the development of logic and affected mathematics and philosophy, as well as other disciplines. The philosophy of mathematics has been forced to grapple with the significance of Gödel's results ever since they were announced. His work was as epoch-making as that of Albert Einstein , even if the ramifications have not been as visible to the general public. Gregory H. Moore, in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, related that in May of 1972 mathematician Oskar Morgenstern wrote that Einstein himself said that "Gödel's papers were the most important ones on relativity theory since his own [Einstein's] original paper appeared."

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