1906-1978

Austrian-American Mathematician

The names of most mathematical innovators, while they may loom large within their own community, are hardly ever known to the outside world. Kurt Gödel's name and achievements, however, are a part of the framework necessary to an understanding of the postmodern worldview. His incompleteness theorem, which holds that within any axiomatic system there are propositions that cannot be proved or disproved using the axioms of that system, would prove as earth shattering as the better-known relativity theory of his friend Albert Einstein (1879-1955).

Kurt Gödel. (AP/Wide World. Reproduced with permission.)

The younger son of Rudolf (a textile worker) and Marianne Gödel was born on April 28, 1906. His hometown of Brünn—now Brno in the Czech Republic—was then part of Moravia, a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Gödel's family were themselves...