Gödel, Kurt
Gdel, Kurt
1906-, Austrian mathematician and logician — educated at Vienna, and now located (1941) at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N. J. — is best known for his important incompleteness theorem, the closely related theorem on the impossibility (under certain circumstances) of formalizing a consistency proof for a logistic system within that system, and the essentially simple but far-reaching device of arithmetization of syntax which is emploved in the proof of these theorems (see Logic, formal, 6). Also of importance are his proof of the completeness of the functional calculus of first order (see Logic, formal, 3), and his recent work on the consistency of the axiom of choice (q. v.) and of Cantor’s continuum hypothesis. — A.C.