Hilbert, Gottingen and The Development of Modern Mathematics

Hilbert, Göttingen and
the Development of
Modern Mathematics
Hilbert, Göttingen and
the Development of
Modern Mathematics
By
Joan Roselló
Hilbert, Göttingen and the Development of Modern Mathematics
By Joan Roselló
This book first published 2019
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Copyright © 2019 by Joan Roselló
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the prior permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN (10): 1-5275-2331-4

ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-2331-9
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Illustrations ..................................................................................... ix
Introduction ................................................................................................. 1
Chapter One ................................................................................................. 7

Hilbert’s Early Career
Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 15

The Theory of Algebraic Invariants
Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 27

The Königsberg Lectures on Geometry
Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 39

The Algebraic Theory of Numbers
Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 53

Klein and the Mathematical Tradition of Göttingen
Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 63

Hilbert’s First Years at Göttingen
Chapter Seven............................................................................................ 71
The Foundations of Geometry
Chapter Eight ............................................................................................. 79

The Axiomatization of Geometry
Chapter Nine.............................................................................................. 87
Hilbert and American Postulational Analysis
Chapter Ten ............................................................................................... 97

The Axiomatization of Analysis
vi Table of Contents
Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 103

The Hilbert Problems
Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 113

From Integral Equations to Hilbert Spaces
Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 123

Paradoxes in Göttingen
Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 131

The Consistency of Analysis
Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 139

Minkowski and the Early Reception of Relativity Theory at Göttingen
Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 149

Hilbert’s Foundations of Physics
Chapter Seventeen ................................................................................... 159

Beyond Principia Mathematica
Chapter Eighteen ..................................................................................... 171

The Great Debate on the Foundations of Mathematics
Chapter Nineteen ..................................................................................... 181

The Foundations of Quantum Mechanics
Chapter Twenty ....................................................................................... 193

Hilbert’s Program and Gödel’s Response
Chapter Twenty-One ............................................................................... 205

The Noether School and the Rise of Modern Algebra
Chapter Twenty-Two............................................................................... 215

Mathematics in Göttingen under the Nazis
Chapter Twenty-Three............................................................................. 225

Hilbert, Bourbaki and the Structural Image of Mathematics
Epilogue................................................................................................... 233
From Göttingen to Princeton and Paris
Hilbert, Göttingen and the Development of Modern Mathematics vii
Appendix ................................................................................................. 239

The Hilbert Problems revisited
Reference List.......................................................................................... 259
Author Index............................................................................................ 267

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Fig. 1-1 Pregel river with the castle of Konigsberg in the background.
By Unknown௅Adam Kraft, Rudolf Naujok: Ostpreußen. Ein Bildwerk mit
220 Fotos. Würzburg 2002, ISBN 3-88189-444-6, Abb. 7, Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49851038.
Fig. 1-2 Albertine University of Königsberg.

By Alte Postkarte, Public Domain,
Fig. 1-3 Hermann Minkowski, 1883.

By Unknown௅Reid, Constance (1970) Hilbert, Berlin, Heidelberg:
Springer Berlin Heidelberg Imprint Springer, p. 224 ISBN: 978-3-662-
27132-2., Public Domain,
Fig. 1-4 David Hilbert, 1886.

By http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/PictDisplay/Hilbert.
htmlReid, Constance (1970) Hilbert, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin
Heidelberg Imprint Springer, p. 226 ISBN: 978-3-662-27132-2., Public
Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91396.
Fig. 2-1 The founders of the DMV in Bremen in 1890.

Author: Ortgies, J. jr. (photos provided by Ortgies, J. jr.)
Source: Bernd Fischer, München. The Oberwolfach Photo Collection.
Photo ID: 10606.
Fig. 3-1 Adolf Hurwitz as an Extraordinarius in Königsberg.

x List of Illustrations
Fig. 3-2 Projection of a figure in a plane.

By Torretti, Roberto, “Nineteenth Century Geometry,” The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/geometry-19th/.
Fig. 3-3 Desargues’ theorem.

By Weisstein, Eric W. “Desargues’ Theorem.”
From MathWorld௅A Wolfram Web Resource.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/DesarguesTheorem.html/.
Fig. 5-1 Felix Klein as a professor at Leipzig.

By Unknown. Public Domain,
Fig. 6-1 The University of Göttingen at the beginning of the 20th century.
By Vereinigung Göttinger Papierhändler, Göttingen௅ImageZeno.org, ID
number 20000606855, Public Domain,
Fig. 9-1 Eliakim Hasting Moore.

By Unknown௅Historical photo, Public Domain,
Fig. 11-1 David Hilbert, ca. 1900.

Fig. 13-1 Ernst Zermelo in the 1900s.

By Unknown (Mondadori Publishers),
http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-the-german-
mathematician-ernst-zermelo-1900s-news-photo/141551246, Public
Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41238428.
Fig 14-1. Logische Principien des mathematischen Denkens. Lecture notes

by Max Born. Unpublished manuscript. Georg-August-Universität
Göttingen. Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek.
Fig. 15-1 Poincaré, Mittag-Leffler, Runge and Landau.

Author: Jacobs, Konrad (photos provided by Jacobs, Konrad).
Hilbert, Göttingen and the Development of Modern Mathematics xi
Source: Konrad Jacobs, Erlangen. Oberwolfach Photo Collection.

Photo ID: 17115
Fig. 16-1 David Hilbert, 1912.

By Unknown௅Possibly Reid, Constance (1970) Hilbert, Berlin,
Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg Imprint Springer, p. 230 ISBN:
978-3-662-27132-2., Public Domain,
Fig. 16-2 Albert Einstein, 1916.

By Paul Ehrenfest௅Museum Boerhaave, Public Domain,
Fig. 17-1 Paul Bernays, ca. 1920.

By Unknown. ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Bildarchiv/Fotograf: Unbekannt/
Portr_10424/Public Domain Mark.
Fig. 18-1 Brouwer and Bohr at the International Mathematical Congress,

Zurich 1932. Public Domain,
Fig. 19-1 The Mathematical Institute at Bunsenstrasse, 3-5.

By Daniel Schwen - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5,
Fig. 19-2 Richard Courant in a lecture, 1932.

Author: Piene, Kay (photos provided by Piene, Kay)
Source: Piene, Ragni, Oslo. Copyright: MFO. The Oberwolfach Photo
Collection, photo id=17002
Fig. 21-1 Emmy Noether with colleagues at Nikolausberg (near

Göttingen). By Artin, Natascha. Source: archives of P. Roquette,
Heidelberg and C. Kimberling, Evansville. The Oberwolfach Photo
Collection. Photo ID: 9265.
Fig. 22-1 David Hilbert in a lecture, 1932.

Author: Piene, Kay (photos provided by Piene, Kay)
Source: Piene, Ragni, Oslo. Copyright: MFO. The Oberwolfach Photo
Collection, photo id=17004.
Fig. 22-2 Courant, Landau and Weyl converse in Göttingen, ca. 1930.
By Unknown. AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Nina Courant Collection.
xii List of Illustrations
Fig. 22-3 Emmy Noether’s letter of dismissal, copy for the Rektorat.
Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen.
http://kulturerbe.niedersachsen.de/viewer/objekt/isil_DE-
7_gua_rek_3206_b_nr37/1/LOG_0000/.
Fig. 23-1 Bourbaki founding congress in Besse-en-Chandesse, July 1935.

By Unknown. Collection Privee/ Archives Charmet/Bridgeman images.
Fig. 24-1 Kurt Gödel and Albert Einstein at Princeton, 1950.

By Imagno. Hulton Collection. Getty Images.
Fig. 24-2 Alexandre Grothendieck lecturing at the Seminar of Algebraic

Geometry (1962-1964). Photo credit: IHES.
INTRODUCTION
David Hilbert is undoubtedly one of the most outstanding mathematicians

of the twentieth century and probably the most influential of them all. His
importance is explained not only by his capital contributions to the
development of contemporary mathematics, but also by his prominent role
in the conversion of the University of Göttingen into a mecca of
mathematical research and, related to this, his personal character: his
leadership, his lack of prejudice of all kinds, his internationalism, his
ability to work in a team and his fraternization with students.
Where does Hilbert’s mathematical talent lie? In his accurate
Lebensgeschichte (Biography) on Hilbert, Otto Blumenthal, a disciple of
Hilbert’s in Göttingen, says the following about:
In the analysis of mathematical talent one has to differentiate between the
ability to create new concepts and to generate new types of thought
structures, and the gift for sensing deeper connections and the underlying
unity. In Hilbert’s case, his greatness lies in an immensely powerful insight
that penetrates into the depths of a question [...] Insofar as the creation of
new ideas is concerned, I would place Minkowski higher, and from the
classical great ones, Gauss, Galois and Riemann. But when it comes to
penetrating insight, only a very few of the greatest were the equal to
Hilbert.1
It is obviously not the case that Hilbert was not able “to create new
concepts and generate new types of thought structures.” For example,
Hilbert spaces, a key concept of modern functional analysis, and Hilbert
class fields, a fundamental notion in algebraic number theory, are a clear
demonstration of Hilbert’s talent regarding the introduction of key
concepts in modern mathematics. It is also not the case that Hilbert was
not able to demonstrate major new theorems of modern mathematics. For
example, Hilbert’s Nullstellensatz (Hilbert’s zero theorem), Hilbert’s finite
basis theorem and Hilbert-Waring theorem are first order contributions to
modern mathematics.
However, as noted by Blumenthal, it was probably Hilbert’s
“penetrating insight” “for sensing deeper connections and the underlying
1
Hilbert 1965, vol. 3, 429.
2 Introduction
unity” in one or more branches of mathematics, the most characteristic

feature of his contributions to mathematics. This is evident, for example,
in the way in his famous work Die Theorie der algebraischen Zahlkörper
(The Theory of Algebraic Number Fields) (1897), he was able to
synthesize and reorganize the algebraic number theory of those days, to
open new research perspectives and, finally, to establish connections of
this subject with other branches of mathematics.
But this ability of Hilbert “for sensing deeper connections and the
underlying unity” is manifested mainly in the application of the axiomatic
method to different branches of mathematics. Hilbert initially applied this
method to geometry with the purpose of reconstructing it from a more
solid basis and within the framework of a deductive system that would
enable one to see the logical connections between the different geometries
that emerged in the nineteenth century (basically non-Euclidean,
projective and no Archimedean geometries) and Euclidean geometry. This
is essentially the aim of Grundlagen der Geometrie (The Foundations of
Geometry) (1899), a masterpiece in the history of modern mathematics
which gave him a deserved worldwide reputation. Shortly after, Hilbert
also applied the axiomatic method to analysis and later to physics and
logic. In addition, his disciple Ernst Zermelo also applied the axiomatic
method to the “naive” set theory initiated by Georg Cantor and developed
by Richard Dedekind, and thus arose “axiomatic” set theory, a
consolidated branch of mathematics today.
Largely, the axiomatization and formalization of the different branches
of mathematics has been considered throughout the twentieth century and
so far this century their ideal state, since it was considered that rigor in a
specific domain of mathematics could only be achieved if this became a
formal axiomatic system, that is, an axiomatized theory. Not even the
well-known Gödel’s theorems on the incompleteness of any mathematical
theory capable of expressing a minimum arithmetical knowledge have put
into question the viability and fertility of the axiomatic method (although
certainly its limits). However, the genesis and development of the
axiomatic method, as it is understood today, is inextricably linked to the
name of David Hilbert. Here is a major source, if not the most important,
of his influence on the development of mathematics in the XX and XXI
centuries.
Another of the facts that underlines Hilbert’s influence on
contemporary mathematics and his talent “for sensing deeper connections
and the underlying unity” in different branches of mathematics is his
famous conference “Mathematische Probleme” (“Mathematical
Problems”), given at the International Congress of Mathematicians held in
Hilbert, Göttingen and the Development of Modern Mathematics 3
Paris in 1900. In his lecture at the Sorbonne, Hilbert did not only present a
simple list of important mathematical problems of his time, since the
problems often pointed to theories that would provide light on these
problems and to new problems that would arise from these theories.
Indeed, some of the problems were not problems, but rather research
programs. An example of this, but not the only one, would be the sixth
problem in the list, which demanded an axiomatization of physics. In
addition, the problems were grouped into four separate groups according
to their topics, which showed their interconnection. In this sense, the
success of the list of problems presented by Hilbert was not only that it
was a list of well-chosen problems, but basically because it offered a
coherent view of how different branches of mathematics would progress in
the future and for the role deserved to rigor and axiomatization in the
solution and the formulation of various problems.
However, as we said before, the importance of the figure of Hilbert lies
not exclusively in his mathematical talent, but also in his determining role
in the gestation and consolidation of the Georg-August University of
Göttingen as the most important mathematical research centre of the
world. In this, as we will explain later, Hilbert was not alone, but he had
the invaluable collaboration of the great Felix Klein, whose idea was from
the beginning to turn Göttingen into a centre of mathematical excellence.
And with this purpose in mind, he took all necessary steps to get Hilbert to
occupy the chair of mathematics at that university in 1895.
Actually, the life and academic career of Hilbert can be divided into
two clearly differentiated phases: the period of Königsberg, which
embraces from the moment of its birth to its consecration as one of the
most brilliant mathematicians in Germany, and the Göttingen period,
which goes from his arrival at this university until his death in the middle
of the Second World War. Hilbert taught at the University of Königsberg
from 1886 until 1895, the year in which he obtained a chair of
mathematics at the University of Göttingen, an institution to which he
continued to be bound to the rest of his life. During his stay at these
universities, Hilbert taught numerous courses in algebra, number theory,
geometry, analysis, logic, foundations of mathematics, physics, etc., with
the resolution, as Constance Reid has pointed out in his magnificent book
Hilbert, “to educate himself as well as his students through his choice of
subjects and to not repeat lectures, as many docents did.”2
With the arrival of Hilbert, the University of Göttingen gradually
became the paradigm of modern universities, the place where students and
researchers of mathematics and related sciences, particularly physics, from
2
Reid 1970, 28.
4 Introduction
around the world, wanted to go to complete their training or progress in

their research. As we will see throughout this essay, the list of first rate
scientists working in Göttingen during the first three decades of the
century is impressive and includes names such as Hilbert, Hermann
Minkowski, Max Planck, Max Born, Werner Heisenberg, Emmy Noether,
Hermann Weyl and John von Neumann, among many other leading
scientists. However, what is most impressive for our history is that most of
these scientists worked in direct collaboration and often under the
direction of Hilbert. In this sense, Hilbert’s leadership and his influence on
the scientific development of an epoch certainly has no parallel throughout
history.
Only the inexorable passage of time, in the case of Hilbert’s life, and
the rise of Nazism, in the case of Göttingen, diminished his direct
influence on the development of science in the first half of the 20th
century. The arrival of the Nazis to power in 1934 meant the expulsion of
Jewish scientists from all German universities, leading to a progressive
impoverishment of the German scientific and cultural life. Reid explains a
well-known anecdote, which tells Hilbert’s dislike about the situation.
“Sitting next to the Nazis’ newly appointed minister of education at a
banquet, he was asked, “And how is mathematics in Göttingen now that it
has been freed of the Jewish influence?” “Mathematics in Göttingen?”
Hilbert replied. “There is really none any more.””3
One of the peculiarities of Hilbert’s mathematical contributions lies in
the fact that they can be divided more or less sharply in different periods
during which Hilbert was dealing almost exclusively with a particular set
of problems, whether they were relative to the theory of invariants, the
algebraic theory of numbers or the integral equations. In this sense,
Hermann Weyl, an outstanding disciple and successor of Hilbert in
Göttingen, divided the contributions of his teacher into five periods: i.
Theory of invariants (1885-1893). ii. Theory of algebraic number fields
(1893-1898). iii. Foundations, (a) of geometry (1898-1902), (b) of
mathematics in general (1922-1930). iv. Integral Equations (1902-1912).
v. Physics (1910-1922). 4 Although, as noted by Weyl himself, these titles
3
Ibid., 205. The great set-theorist Abraham Fraenkel gives a slightly different
version of the story. According to Fraenkel, Bernhard Rust, the Nazi Reich
Minister for Science, Education, and Popular Culture, asked Hilbert: “Is it really
true, Mr. Professor, that your institute suffered so much from the departure of the
Jews and their friends?” to which Hilbert replied, in his characteristic East Prussian
dialect: “Suffered? No, it hasn’t suffered, Mr. Minister. It simply doesn’t exist
anymore!” (Fraenkel 2016, 135).
4
Weyl 1944, 617.
are perhaps too specific and there are some overlaps,5 the truth is that the
previous periodization of Hilbert’s work gives a fairly accurate general
idea of the whole of his work and can serve as a guide the reader not to
lose himself in the somewhat sinuous vital and intellectual itinerary that
we will cover in this work.
The great mathematical conquests achieved by Hilbert are undoubtedly
a product of his formidable mathematical talent, but surely this talent
would not have been developed with the force it did if Hilbert had not
worked much of his academic life in Göttingen. Hilbert was one of the
architects of the great mathematical tradition of Göttingen and of its
leading position in mathematical research during the first three decades of
the twentieth century, but one must not forget the leadership and
achievements of other mathematicians such as Felix Klein, Hermann Weyl
or Richard Courant in this direction. In this sense, the exhibition of
Hilbert’s contributions to modern mathematics will always be based on the
vital, geographical and historical context in which they originated and this
will almost always suppose a reference to the intense intellectual and
academic life of Göttingen. An exposition of this kind must necessarily
follow a chronological approach, so throughout the book, the precise
exposition of the mathematical concepts and problems addressed by
Hilbert is combined with the description of the life of the author and his
historical context.
5
Also, as noted by D. W. Lewis, “there were exceptions to the list above. For
example, in 1909 Hilbert successfully solved Waring’s problem, a problem
outstanding since 1770 about expressing a natural number as a sum of n-th powers
[…] Also in 1899 Hilbert managed to resuscitate Dirichlet’s Principle concerning
the solution of boundary value problems, this being totally unrelated to the main
research work he was pursuing at this period” (Lewis 1994, 44).
CHAPTER ONE
HILBERT’S EARLY CAREER
David Hilbert was born in Wehlau,1 in the neighbourhood of Königsberg

(now Kaliningrad, Russia), capital of East Prussia and hometown of the
great philosopher Immanuel Kant, the 23rd of January in 1862. That same
year, Otto von Bismarck was entrusted by King William I of Prussia with
forming the next government, achieving, between 1864 and 1871, the
political unification of Germany under Prussian rule. Shortly after the wars
of unification, David’s father, Otto Hilbert, obtained a position as judge in
the city of Königsberg, where he moved with his family. His mother,
Maria Erdtmann was a peculiar woman, interested in astronomy and
philosophy, and fascinated by prime numbers. David was raised and
educated in the Prussian virtues of punctuality, thrift, discipline, duty and
respect for the law. And also, like the rest of the children of Königsberg, in
admiration and respect for Kant.
In 1870 the Franco-Prussian war broke out and, in less than one year, it
marked a definitive step towards the unification of Germany under
Prussian leadership. In the autumn of 1872, when the Prussian army
returned victorious from the war with France, a Jewish family called
Minkowski arrived in Königsberg. His third son, Hermann, eight and a
half years old, entered the Vorschule (preparatory school) of the Altstadt
Gymnasium (Altstadt High-school) in Königsberg. Hermann Minkowski
(1864-1909) soon showed an exceptional talent for mathematics and
would become an inseparable friend and colleague of Hilbert during his
youth. Later he would become a central figure in the gestation and
consolidation of Gottingen as a global reference centre in mathematical
research.
The gymnasium chosen by the parents of David for the education of
their son was the Friedrichskolleg. This school was considered the best of
Königsberg and had had among its students Kant himself. But,
unfortunately for Hilbert, it was a very traditional school, in which the
emphasis was on the memorization of the contents and in its curriculum
1
See Reid (1970, 8).
8 Chapter One
the study of languages, particularly the classical ones, predominated. What

Hilbert liked most were mathematics, as they were easy for him and did
not require memorization. It should not be surprising, therefore, that the
years at Friedrichskolleg were always remembered by Hilbert with
disgust.
Fig. 1-1 Pregel river with the castle of Konigsberg in the background
In September of 1879, in his last years before entering to the university,

Hilbert was transferred to the Wilhelm Gymnasium, a public gymnasium
much more focused on mathematics. The period at Wilhelm Gymnasium
was for Hilbert much more pleasant than the one at Friedrichskolleg and
years later he would remember his stay there with gratitude and affection.
After graduating from gymnasium and having passed the Abitur, the
admission exam to the university, he entered the Albertina University of
Königsberg. This university was then one of the most prestigious in
Germany in the teaching of physics and mathematics, mainly due to the
work carried out by the physicist Franz Neumann (1798-1895) and the
leading authority on mathematical analysis Carl Jacobi (1804-1851).
In his first semester at the university, Hilbert studied analytical
geometry with Johann Georg Rosenhain (1816-1887) and differential
calculus with Louis Saalschütz (1835-1913), two qualified mathematicians
who had done their doctorates under the supervision of Jacobi and his
Hilbert’s Early Career 9
disciple Friedrich Richelot (1808-1875). In the second semester, Hilbert

decided to go to Heidelberg, where he enrolled in courses with Lazarus
Fuchs (1833-1902) on integral calculus and the theory of invariants. After
Hilbert returned to Königsberg he remained there the following four years
until he finished his studies. Among the professors he had at the
University of Königsberg, it is worth mentioning the physicist Gustav
Kirchoff (1824-1887) and the geometer Otto Hesse (1811-1874), disciples
of Neumann and Jacobi. However, the professor who caused a more
profound and lasting influence on Hilbert was Heinrich Weber (1842-
1913), who held the chair of mathematics at the University of Königsberg
from 1875 to 1883.
Fig. 1-2 Albertine University of Königsberg
Weber was a first-class mathematician who, at the time Hilbert met him
for the first time, had just finished, with Richard Dedekind, one of the
most important articles in the history of mathematics entitled “Theorie der
algebraischen Funktionen einer Verfinderlichen” (“The theory of algebraic
functions of one variable”), which was published in 1882 in the prestigious
magazine Crelle’s Journal. Hilbert attended several courses given by
Weber dealing with the theory of numbers and the theory of elliptic
functions, as well as a seminar directed by him dealing with the theory of
invariants. As we will explain later, the theory of algebraic invariants and
the algebraic theory of numbers were the first fields to which Hilbert
devoted his efforts and managed to make himself a name in the
mathematical community.
10 Chapter One
When Weber left Königsberg in 1883 to go to the Technische

Hochschule (Technical University) of Charlottenburg, his place was
occupied by Ferdinand von Lindemann (1852-1939), a geometer who had
studied with Alfred Clebsch (1833-1872) and his disciple, Felix Klein
(1849-1925). Lindemann was one of the most famous mathematicians of
the moment, as he had proved the transcendence of S, and would become
Hilbert’s Doktorvater. Hilbert had shown some interesting results on
continuous fractions and asked Lindemann if this topic could become the
subject of his doctoral thesis. But Lindemann discovered that Hilbert’s
results had been obtained before by Jacobi and proposed to Hilbert another
subject, knowing he had previously studied the theory of invariants with
Weber, namely the study of the invariant properties of harmonic spherical
functions. Hilbert accepted the subject proposed by Lindemann and on
December 11, 1884, he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation.
Indeed, the theory of invariants would become the main topic of his
research over the next eight years even to the point that in a letter to
Minkowski he described himself jokingly as “an expert in the theory of
invariants.”2
Apart from being his doctoral dissertation advisor, the truth is that
Lindemann did not exert a great influence on Hilbert’s mathematical
development. Regarding this, much more important were two young and
brilliant mathematicians of the same generation as Hilbert: Hermann
Minkowski, two years younger than Hilbert but who had enrolled half a
year before him at the Albertine University, and Adolf Hurwitz (1859-
1919), who was Lindemann’s associate but only three years older than
Hilbert. Minkowski was a child prodigy: at the age of 15 he had already
finished the curriculum of the Altstadt Gymnasium in Königsberg and two
years later he won the Grand Prix des Sciences Mathématiques,
announced by the Académie des Sciences in Paris, which would be
awarded to anyone capable of solving the problem of representing a
positive integer as the sum of five squares. Minkowski was shy and
introverted, but Hilbert was soon interested in him and so they forged in
the college an intense friendship that would accompany them throughout
his life. On the other hand, Hurwitz had reached Königsberg on Easter in
1884 as a Professor Extraordinarius (ausserordentlicher), a kind of
associated professor with a fixed salary. Hilbert repeatedly commented
about him that “we, Minkowski and I, were totally astonished by his
knowledge and we thought we could never get as far as him.”3
2
Hilbert 1965, vol. 3, 392.
3
Ibid., 390.
After completing his doctorate, Hilbert stayed one more semester at

Königsberg and attended a course given by Lindemann on the linear
geometry of Plücker and the spherical geometry of Lie, and some
conferences of Hurwitz on modular functions. In May 1885 Hilbert passed
the Staatsexamen (state examination), which enabled him to work as a
teacher at a gymnasium in case his plans to pursue a career in the university
Fig. 1-3 Hermann Minkowski, 1883

12 Chapter One
did not succeed. After the summer Hilbert went to Leipzig, where he was
warmly welcomed by Felix Klein), who led a group of young researchers.
Hilbert stayed the winter semester of 1885/86 working with Klein, who
advised him to visit Paris to get in touch with French mathematicians in
order to extend his mathematical horizons.
Hilbert finally went to Paris with another mathematician from Klein’s
group in Leipzig, Eduard Study (1862-1930), and there he met Henri
Poincaré (1854-1912), Émile Picard (1856-1941), Paul Appell (1855-
1930) and Charles Hermite (1822-1901). But linguistic and other kind of
problems (the relations between France and Germany were not going
through their best moment) did not allow him to take full advantage of his
stay in Paris nor to establish a more fluid contact with Poincaré, who was
maybe the most important mathematician of the moment (having
succeeded Klein in this honour). Indeed, it was Hermite who, despite his
advanced age (64), was more vividly interested in the two young visitors
and explained to them his reciprocal theorem for binary invariants,
encouraging them to extend it to ternary forms. He also told them about
his correspondence with James Joseph Sylvester (1814-1897), who was
trying to give a new proof of Gordan’s theorem, the most important
theorem of invariant theory at the moment.
Despite the difficulties of communication, Klein insisted that Hilbert
take advantage of his stay and to make as many contacts as possible with
French mathematicians. But Hilbert’s priority at that time was to finish his
Habilitationschrift (habilitation thesis), which would enable him to
become a Privatdozent in the university. So, he returned to Königsberg
and presented in the summer of 1886 his Habilitationschrift, entitled Über
invariante Eigenschaften specieller binärer Formen, insbesondere der
Kugelfunctionen (About invariant properties of special binary forms, in
particular the spherical functions). Hilbert worked as a Privatdozent, a
kind of associated professor with no fixed salary and who was paid
depending on the number of students he had, at Königsberg University
from 1886 to 1892.
The following summer Minkowski moved to Bonn where he also
began to work as Privatdozent, so Hilbert was left with only the
intellectual stimulus of his friend and previous professor Hurwitz. Hilbert
himself would remember some years later the almost daily walks with
Hurwitz, from 1886 to 1892, in which they discussed any subject of the
mathematics at their time under the leadership of Hurwitz. Indeed, during
the nine years that he stayed at Königsberg University, Hilbert taught
courses on almost all the areas of higher mathematics of his time: theory
Fig. 1-4 David Hilbert, 1886
of invariants, theory of numbers, analytic, projective, algebraic and

differential geometry, Galois theory, differential equations, theory of
functions, potential theory (study of harmonic functions) and even
hydrodynamics. On the other hand, his scientific production was mainly
focused on the theory of invariants and number theory.

CHAPTER TWO
THE THEORY OF ALGEBRAIC INVARIANTS
In the first semester as Privatdozent at the University of Königsberg,

Hilbert prepared courses on the theory of invariants, determinants and
hydrodynamics, but only the first course could be taught, since in the other
two courses the number of students enrolled did not reach the minimum
required by the university for the course to be taught.1 However, Hilbert
was able to teach these courses in the second semester of the academic
year of 1886/87, in which he also began to plan various courses on
numerical equations and other subjects.
That first year, Hilbert did not make any of the trips he had planned to
break the isolation exerted by a place “so far from things” as Königsberg.
Finally, in 1888, during Easter holidays, Hilbert made a trip to Leipzig,
Göttingen and Berlin. In Leipzig, he met Paul A. Gordan (1837-1912), the
“king of invariants” who had been the first to prove the existence of a
finite basis for the invariant systems of a binary form. Still in Leipzig, he
wrote to Klein in Göttingen: “With the stimulating help of Prof. Gordan an
infinite series of thought vibrations has been generated within me, and in
particular, so we believe, I have a wonderful short proof for the finiteness
of binary systems of forms.”2 After spending a week with Gordan in
Leipzig, Hilbert arrived in Göttingen, where he met Felix Klein and
Hermann Schwarz (1843-1921). Before leaving Göttingen, during the
month of March 1888, Hilbert wrote a new proof of Gordan’s theorem that
synthesized and simplified it.
From Göttingen, Hilbert went to Berlin where he visited Lazarus
Fuchs, Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894), Karl Weierstrass (1815-
1897), who had just retired, and Leopold Kronecker (1823-1891). Of all of
them, the most important visit in Hilbert’s eyes was the one with
Kronecker, with whom he talked about his investigations in the theory of

1
J. J. Gray explains that “Königsberg attracted very few students in the late 1880s
and 1890s, and Hilbert, who certainly became a very good lecturer, often had an
audience of only 2 or 3” (Gray 2000, 22).
2
Hilbert to Klein, 21 March 1888, in Frei (1985, 39).

16 Chapter Two
invariants but also about the meaning of the word “to exist” in
mathematics and Kronecker’s objections to the use of irrational numbers
by Weierstrass. On his return trip to Königsberg, Hilbert still continued to
think about Gordan’s problem.
In the summer Hilbert went to Rauschen (nowadays Swedlogorsk), a
seaside resort city on the Baltic sea, where he had spent the summer with
his family ever since he was a child. There, on September 8, he sent a note
entitled “Zur Theorie der algebraischen Gebilde” (“On the theory of
algebraic figures”) to the journal Göttingen Nachrichten. In this note he
solved the problem of proving the finiteness of the invariant systems in a
trivial and complete way from a more abstract and less computational
perspective. This proof would be refined and extended in several
directions in a couple more notes sent to Göttingen Nachrichten the
following year. All these results were summarized in the article “Zur
Theorie der algebraischen Formen” (“On the theory of algebraic forms”),
published in the prestigious journal Mathematische Annalen in 1890. In
1892 Hilbert generalized his proof to any n-ary forms in an article entitled
“Über die vollen Invariantensysteme” (“On complete systems of
invariants”), published the following year in Mathematische Annalen. The
main results of the Annalen papers of 1890 and 1893 were presented some
years later in the introductory course Theorie der algebraischen
Invarianten (“Theory of algebraic invariants”), given by Hilbert in the
summer semester of 1897 in the University of Göttingen.
The theory of algebraic invariants was one of the most active research
fields in the second half of the 19th century and, as we know, the field to
which Hilbert dedicated his doctoral thesis and much of his efforts from
1885 to 1893. We could say, in a very summarized way, that the
fundamental objectives of classical invariant theory were: first, the
determination of the invariants of the forms (homogeneous polynomials)
of any degree and with any number of variables, and second, the proof that
there is a finite basis for all invariants of a given forms system (that is, that
there is a finite set of independent invariants which generates all the
invariants of the system).
The origins of invariant theory can be found in the study of
transformation of homogeneous polynomials by linear substitutions of the
variables in the work of Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736-1813) Mécanique
Analytique (1788). Some years later Carl Friedrich Gauss (1736-1813), in
his Disquisitiones Arithmeticae (1801), established a new discipline, the
theory of forms (binary and ternary), where he studied transformations,
similarities, classifications and compositions of forms. In particular, in his
study of binary quadratic forms, Gauss defined an equivalence relation

The Theory of Algebraic Invariants 17
between them and showed that the discriminant is an invariant under such
relation. Although invariant theory was already hinted at in Gauss’s
seminal work, the creation and development of this theory is mainly due to
the so-called British school, particularly George Boole (1815-1864),
Arthur Cayley (1821-1895) and James Joseph Sylvester.
Forty years after the publication of Gauss’s work, Boole wrote two
papers: “Exposition of a general theory of linear transformations” (Parts I,
II), which are usually regarded as the beginning of Invariant Theory.
However, as remarked by P. R. Wolfson, Boole’s principal aim in these
papers “had been, first, to determine when two pairs of forms are
equivalent, and second, if they are indeed equivalent, to determine those
substitutions which take the first pair to the second.”3 The first who clearly
stated the main objective of study of Invariant Theory was Arthur Cayley.
This was, according to him, “to find all the derivatives of any number of
functions, which have the property of preserving their form unaltered after
any linear transformations of the variables.”4 So Cayley put in the
forefront of the study of linear transformations the problem of finding all
invariants of any number of forms, thereby initiating the principal line of
research of classical invariant theory.
In the decades of the 1840s and 1850s the English school of invariant
theory, mainly led by Cayley and Sylvester, developed important tools still
in use today to determine the invariants of a given system of binary forms,
such as the Cayley ȳ-operator. In the meanwhile, Siegfried Aronhold
(1819-1884) in Germany introduced a more flexible notation and a
symbolic method that made it easier to calculate invariants and operate at a
more abstract level. The notation and method were adopted by Alfred
Clebsch and Paul Gordan, who worked extensively in the topic.
One of the most important successes of the German school–and indeed
of the theory of invariants in the late nineteenth century–was obtained by
Gordan, who had published a proof of a finiteness theorem for binary
forms in 1868. In particular, Gordan proved that given any system of
binary forms of arbitrary degree, the set of simultaneous invariants of the
system (possibly an infinite set) is finitely generated, i.e., there is a finite
subset of invariants ‫ܫ‬ଵ ǡ ‫ܫ‬ଶ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ܫ‬௞ of the invariant set such that each element
of this set is a polynomial in ‫ܫ‬ଵ ǡ ‫ܫ‬ଶ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ܫ‬௞ . As a result of this proof, which
was obtained by cumbersome calculations and using the symbolic method,
Gordan was crowned “King of Invariants.”

3
Wolfson 2008, 45.
4
Cayley 1846, 104.

18 Chapter Two
The Theory of algebraic invariants (1897)
A homogeneous polynomial is a polynomial in which terms all have

the same degree. For example,‫ݔ‬ଵଷ ൅ ʹ‫ݔ‬ଵଶ ‫ݔ‬ଶ ൅ ͹‫ݔ‬ଵ ‫ݔ‬ଶଶ is a homogenous
polynomial of degree ͵, since the sum of the exponents in each term is
always 3. Homogeneous polynomials are also often called algebraic
forms or simply forms. A binary form ݂ሺ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ‫ݔ‬ଶ ሻ of degree ݊ in the
variables ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ‫ݔ‬ଶ is a homogeneous polynomial of degree ݊ in the
variables ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ‫ݔ‬ଶ .
In the 1897 lectures, Hilbert only considers binary forms, but says
that generalizing to ݊-ary forms poses in general no problems. He
writes a ݊-ary binary form ݂ as
݊
݂ ሺ௡ሻ ሺ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ‫ݔ‬ଶ ሻ ൌ σ௡௜ୀ଴ ቀ ቁ ܽ௜ ‫ݔ‬ଵ௜ ‫ݔ‬ଶ௡ିଵ
݅
݊ ݊
ൌ ܽ௜ ‫ݔ‬ଵ௡ ൅ ቀ ቁ ܽଵ ‫ݔ‬ଵ௡ିଵ ‫ݔ‬ଶ ൅ ቀ ቁ ܽଶ ‫ݔ‬ଵ௡ିଶ ‫ݔ‬ଶଶ ൅ ‫ ڮ‬൅ ܽ௡ ‫ݔ‬ଶ௡ Ǥ
ͳ ʹ
A linear change of variables ൫ߙ௜௝ ൯ is a transformation of the variables
‫ݔ‬ଵ and ‫ݔ‬ଶ given by
‫ݔ‬ଵ ൌ ߙଵଵ ‫ݔ‬ଵᇱ ൅ ߙଵଶ ‫ݔ‬ଶᇱ
‫ݔ‬ଶ ൌ ߙଶଵ ‫ݔ‬ଵᇱ ൅ ߙଶଶ ‫ݔ‬ଶᇱ
such that the determinant ߜ of the entries, ߙଵଵ ߙଶଶ െ ߙଵଶ ߙଶଵ , is non-
zero. Under a linear change of variables, the binary form
ሺ೙ሻ
݂ ሺ௡ሻ ሺ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ‫ݔ‬ଶ ሻis transformed into another binary form ݂ ᇱ ሺ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ‫ݔ‬ଶ ሻ in the
ᇱ ᇱ
new variables ‫ݔ‬ଵ , ‫ݔ‬ଶ defined by
௡
ሺ೙ሻ ݊
݂ ᇱ ሺ‫ݔ‬ଵᇱ ǡ ‫ݔ‬ଶᇱ ሻ ൌ ෍ ቀ ቁ ܽ௜ ሺߙଵଵ ‫ݔ‬ଵᇱ ൅ ߙଵଶ ‫ݔ‬ଶᇱ ሻ௜ ሺߙଶଵ ‫ݔ‬ଵᇱ ൅ ߙଶଶ ‫ݔ‬ଶᇱ ሻ௡ି௜ Ǥ
݅
௜ୀ଴
After expanding and rearranging this becomes
௡
ሺ೙ሻ ݊ ሺ௜ሻ ሺ௡ି௜ሻ
݂ ᇱ ሺ‫ݔ‬ଵᇱ ǡ ‫ݔ‬ଶᇱ ሻ ൌ ෍ ቀ ቁ ܽ௜ᇱ ‫ݔ‬ଵᇱ ‫ݔ‬ଶᇱ Ǥ
݅
௜ୀ଴
An invariant of the form ݂ is a polynomial function ‫ܫ‬ሺܽ଴ ǡ ܽଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ܽ௡ ሻ of
the coefficients of ݂ which changes only by a factor equal to a power
of the transformation determinant ߜ when one makes a linear change of
variables, i.e.,
ሺܽ଴ᇱ ǡ ܽଵᇱ ǡ ǥ ǡ ܽ௡ᇱ ሻ ൌ ߜ ௞ ‫ܫ‬ሺܽ଴ ǡ ܽଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ܽ௡ ሻ
for some ݇ ‫ א‬Գ. For example, let ݂ ൌ ܽ଴ ‫ݔ‬ଵଶ ൅ ʹܽଵ ‫ݔ‬ଵ ‫ݔ‬ଶ ൅ ܽଶ ‫ݔ‬ଶଶ (a
binary form of degree 2, i.e., a quadratic form). Then ‫ ܫ‬ൌ ܽ଴ ܽଶ െ ܽଵଶ is
మ
an invariant of ݂ because ܽ଴ᇱ ܽଶᇱ െ ܽଵᇱ ൌ ߜ ଶ ሺܽ଴ ܽଶ െ ܽଵ ሻ (as Hilbert
easily proves).
cont. p. 19

In lecture 24, Hilbert introduces the idea of simultaneous

invariants. Here one begins with a system of algebraic forms, each
with the same number of variables but not necessarily of the same
degree. An invariant of the system is a polynomial in the set of
coefficients of all the forms that changes only by a power of the
transformation determinant when the same linear transformation is
applied simultaneous to all the forms. In lectures 34-36, Hilbert
proceeds to prove his general finiteness theorem, which asserts the
existence of a finite basis for any set (possibly infinite) of simultaneous
invariants of a system of algebraic forms of arbitrary degree. Hilbert
proves this theorem following the lines of the proof he had already
given in his 1890 paper, that is, he uses the well-known Hilbert Basis
Theorem for polynomial ideals together with the so-called Cayley’s ȳ-
process. The first is stated by Hilbert in the following terms:
Hilbert Basis Theorem: Given any infinite series of forms with

݊ variables ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ‫ݔ‬ଶ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ such as ‫ܨ‬ଵ ǡ ‫ܨ‬ଶ ǡ ‫ܨ‬ଷ ǡ ǥ , there is always a
number ݉ such that any form [‫ ]ܨ‬of that series can be
represented as ‫ ܨ‬ൌ ‫ܣ‬ଵ ‫ܨ‬ଵ ൅‫ܣ‬ଶ ‫ܨ‬ଶ ൅ ‫ ڮ‬൅ ‫ܣ‬௠ ‫ܨ‬௠ , where
‫ܣ‬ଵ ǡ ‫ܣ‬ଶ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ܣ‬௠ are suitable forms of the same ݊ variables.
The ȳ-process is a differentiation process that produces an invariant

when applied repeatedly to a polynomial. Hilbert’s basis theorem
yields a set of invariants ‫ܫ‬ଵ ǡ ‫ܫ‬ଶ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ܫ‬௞ such that any ‫ܫ‬௜ ሺͳ ൑ ݅ ൑ ݇ሻ is of
the form ‫ܫ‬௜ ൌ ‫ܨ‬ଵ ‫ܫ‬ଵ ൅‫ܨ‬ଶ ‫ܫ‬ଶ ൅ ‫ ڮ‬൅ ‫ܨ‬௞ ‫ܫ‬௞ for some forms ‫ܨ‬ଵ ǡ ‫ܨ‬ଶ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ܨ‬௞ .
Applying the ȳ-process to each of the ‫ܨ‬௜ yields invariants ‫ܩ‬௜ such that
‫ܫ‬௜ ൌ ‫ܩ‬ଵ ‫ܫ‬ଵ ൅‫ܩ‬ଶ ‫ܫ‬ଶ ൅ ‫ ڮ‬൅ ‫ܩ‬௞ ‫ܫ‬௞ , where each ‫ܩ‬௜ has a degree less than the
degree of ‫ܫ‬, since each ‫ܨ‬௜ has a degree of at least one. By expressing
each ‫ܩ‬௜ in terms of the set ‫ܫ‬ଵ ǡ ‫ܫ‬ଶ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ܫ‬௞ and repeating the process as
many times as needed, we can write ‫ ܫ‬as a polynomial in ‫ܫ‬ଵ ǡ ‫ܫ‬ଶ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ܫ‬௞ .
Two other results in Hilbert’s course are worth mentioning. In
Lecture 39, Hilbert introduces the famous Hilbert’s Nullstellensatz
(Hilbert’s zeros theorem), an intriguing result on the zero set of
families of forms (and by extension polynomials):
Hilbert’s Nullstellensatz: Let ݂ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ݂௠ be ݉ rational

homogeneous functions with ݊ variables ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ . Let
‫ ܨ‬ᇱ ǡ ‫ ܨ‬ᇱᇱ ǡ ‫ ܨ‬ᇱᇱ ǡ ǥ be any rational function with the property that they
cont. p. 20

20 Chapter Two
vanish for all those systems of values of these variables for

which the given ݉ functions ݂ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ݂௠ are all equal to zero.
Then it is always possible to find an integer number ‫ ݎ‬such that
every product ςሺ௥ሻ of any ‫ ݎ‬functions of the series
‫ ܨ‬ᇱ ǡ ‫ ܨ‬ᇱᇱ ǡ ‫ ܨ‬ᇱᇱ ǡ ǥ can be expressed in the form ςሺ௥ሻ ൌ
ܽଵ ݂ଵ ൅ܽଶ ݂ଶ ൅ ‫ ڮ‬൅ ܽ௠ ݂௠ , where ܽଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ܽ௠ are suitable selected
rational homogeneous functions with the variables ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ .
In Lecture 47 Hilbert states a third noteworthy result known today as

Hilbert’s Syzygy Theorem. The set of invariants ‫ܫ‬ଵ ǡ ‫ܫ‬ଶ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ܫ‬௞ is not
usually independent, i.e., there will be a set of relations between them.
This set of relations forms an ideal and so must have a finite basis
ܴଵ ǡ ܴଶ ǡ ǥ ǡ ܴ௝ by the finiteness theorem. Now, there may be also
relations between these basic relations, i.e., expressions of the form
ܵଵ ܴଵ ൅ܵଶ ܴଶ ൅ ‫ ڮ‬൅ ܵ௝ ܴ௝ ൌ Ͳ. These are the first-order syzygies. They
again form an ideal to which the finiteness theorem applies so that they
must have finite basis ܵଵ ǡ ܵଶ ǡ ǥ ǡ ܵ௟ . The relations between these
relations are the second-order syzygies. It may seem that this process
can be iterated ad infinitum, but Hilbert’s Syzygy Theorem asserts that
the chain of syzygies terminates after finitely many steps. In Hilbert’s
words:
Hilbert’s Syzygy Theorem: The system of irreducible syzygies

of first order, second order, etc. forms a chain of derived
equation systems. This chain of syzygies breaks off in the end
and there are no syzygies of an order higher than ݉ ൅ ͳ, if ݉
is the number of the invariants of the whole system.
Although the validity of Gordan’s result had already been proved for
particular cases of higher-degree forms, nobody had been able to
generalize Gordan’s result beyond binary forms. Twenty years after the
publication of Gordan’s proof the problem was still open and had become
the fundamental problem of the theory of invariants. Hilbert had discussed
this problem with Hermite and Study in Paris and surely also with Klein
and the circle of young mathematicians around him during his visit to
Leipzig.
Hilbert had been introduced to Gordan by Felix Klein and spent a week
with him in Leipzig in the spring of 1888. In the following years, he wrote
a series of articles which gave invariant theory a more abstract orientation.

More specifically, in 1890 Hilbert introduced the idea of what would later
be called a Noetherian polynomial algebra to prove Gordan’s theorem
again and in 1893 he used the same idea to generalize Gordan’s theorem to
݊-ary forms, that is, to prove the finitude of any system of invariants of
forms of any degree.
Hilbert proved that there must be a finite basis by induction over the
degree (number of variables) of the forms considered. The problem of
Hilbert’s proof was that the argument used to demonstrate the existence of
a finite basis was not constructive; it was rather an indirect proof (through
reduction ad absurdum). That is to say, Hilbert did not give an effective
procedure to calculate, for each system of forms of degree ݊, the number
of the invariants of the basis, but showed that the negation of the statement
asserting the existence of a basis for any system of forms and for all ݊
leads to a contradiction. This led Gordan, after having seen Hilbert’s
proof, to affirm that “this is not mathematics, it is theology.” Later,
Gordan modified his opinion, but Hilbert’s proof would open another front
of controversy, this time with Leopold Kronecker, about what it means “to
exist” in mathematics.
In the article of 1893, read on his behalf at the International
Mathematical Congress held in Chicago that year, Hilbert also reflected on
the state of development of the theory of invariants and his contributions
to it. According to him, in the development of mathematical theories one
can distinguish three stages, which he characterizes as the naïve, formal
and critic stages. In the case of the theory of invariants, Hilbert saw the
work of Cayley and Sylvester as exponents of the naive stage, the work of
Clebsch and Gordan as representative of the formal stage and, finally, his
own contributions as the only exponent of the critical stage.5 In fact, in the
last lines of the above-mentioned article, Hilbert expressed his conviction
that “he had achieved the most important general objectives of a theory of
functional fields of invariants.”6 More or less at the same time, Hilbert told
Minkowski that “with the Annalen article I definitively leave the field of
invariants and I now turn to the theory of numbers.”7
The well-known algebraist and historian of mathematics, Bartel
Leendert van der Waerden (1903-1996), wrote in a review of Hilbert’s
contributions to algebra that, although the articles of 1888 and 1893
constituted the conclusion of Hilbert’s research on the theory of invariants,

5
We shall see later that Hilbert sees the axiomatic analysis of geometry and of any
other branch of mathematics as the representative of the last stage of the
development of the theory, that is, the critical stage.
6
Hilbert 1965, vol. 2, 344.
7
Ibid., vol. 3, 395.

22 Chapter Two
they would have “an overwhelming and revolutionary influence on

algebraic thinking in the ensuing years.”8 According to van der Waerden
“when Hilbert, in these articles, considers the fields of invariants as special
cases of the fields of functions, he is at the edge of an historical
development: before him the interest of the algebraists was mainly
directed towards the possibility of explicitly representing all invariants in a
basic given form; after him, the algebraists looked more towards the
arithmetic and algebraic properties of the systems of rational and algebraic
functions. From inside this circle of ideas, the general theories of abstract
fields, rings and modules arose naturally.”9
As a matter of fact, in the years following the publication of Hilbert’s
articles the theory of invariants would transform into something
completely different from the theory established before their publication.
The first step in that direction was given by Emmy Noether (1882-1935), a
collaborator of Hilbert’s and van der Waerden’s teacher in Göttingen,
when she generalized Hilbert’s finiteness theorem so that it was not
connected to the theory of invariants but was a result of the modern
algebra. To see this, note first that in modern terminology (as we have
seen Hilbert doesn’t use the words ideal and ring and he speaks of forms
instead of polynomials), Hilbert’s theorem can be stated and generalized as
follows: Let ‫ܭ‬ሾ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ ሿ be the ring of polynomials with ݊ variables and
coefficients belonging to any field. Then
Hilbert basis Theorem: Every ideal in the polynomial ring ‫ܭ‬ሾ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ ሿ has
a finite basis, i.e., every ideal is generated by a finite number of elements
of the ring.
A ring in which every ideal is finitely generated (or equivalently, every

ascending chain of ideals terminates) is called nowadays a Noetherian
ring. Hence Hilbert’s theorem is usually stated in modern algebra
textbooks in the following form:
Hilbert basis Theorem: If ‫ ܭ‬is a Noetherian ring, then every polynomial
ring ‫ܭ‬ሾ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ ሿ is also a Noetherian ring.
Thus, Noether’s work can be seen as a decisive step in the transformation

of the theory of invariants and its consideration as a part within modern
abstract algebra. The above is just an example of the generalizations and
reinterpretations of Hilbert’s most significant theorems in invariant theory

8
Ibid., vol. 2, 401.
9
Ibid.

by modern abstract algebra. The other two main theorems presented by

Hilbert in the 1890 and 1893 paper can also be dealt in a similar way.
Regarding the Nullstellensatz we have the following generalization:
Let ‫ ܣ‬be an ideal of the polynomial ring ‫ܭ‬ሾ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ ሿ, where ‫ ܭ‬is an
algebraic closed field. We can think of ‫ ܣ‬as generated by a finite number
of polynomials ݂ଵ ǡ ݂ଶ ǡ ǥ ǡ ݂௡ . The zeros of ‫( ܣ‬literally Nullstellen means
zero places) are the points ܽଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ܽ௡ of the ݊-dimensional space ‫ ܭ‬௡ for
which the identity ݂௜ ሺܽଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ܽ௡ ሻ ൌ Ͳ, ሺͳ ൑ ݅ ൑ ‫ݎ‬ሻ, holds true. (In
Geometry, the set of zeros of ‫ ܣ‬is called an algebraic variety. Hilbert
called it an algebraischer Gebilde (algebraic configuration). We have then
Hilbert’s Nullstellensatz: If the polynomial ݃ vanishes at all zeros of the
ideal ‫ܣ‬, then there is a power ݃௠ belonging to ‫ ܣ‬such that ݃௠ ൌ
σଵஸ௜ஸ௥ ‫ݑ‬௜ ݂௜ , ሺ‫ݑ‬௜ ‫ܭ א‬ሾ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ ሿሻ.
If ܴ is a commutative ring and ‫ ܣ‬and ideal of ܴ, then a Nullstelle of ‫ ܣ‬is a

maximal ideal of ܴ which contains ‫ܣ‬. When an element ݃ ‫ ܴ א‬belongs to
all these maximal ideals, then it is said that “݃ vanishes at all the zeros of
‫”ܣ‬. A ring in which Hilbert’s Nullstellensatz in this abstract sense is valid
is called a Hilbert’s ring. We also have then the following generalization:
Hilbert’s Nullstellensatz: If ‫ ܭ‬is a Hilbert’s ring, then every polynomial
ring ‫ܭ‬ሾ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ ሿ is also a Hilbert’s ring.
As an immediate consequence of the above generalizations we have that

every polynomial ring over a field is a Noetherian and Hilbertian (also
called Jacobian) ring. Hilbert’s Nullstellensatz is nowadays usually
regarded as a foundational theorem of algebraic geometry, since it yields a
correspondence between geometric objects (varieties) and algebraic
objects (prime ideals of polynomial rings).
Finally, regarding the Syzygy Theorem we also have an intriguing
generalization and reinterpretation in terms of modern abstract algebra. Let
‫ ܯ‬be a finitely generated ܴ-module (ܴ a commutative ring) and ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡
its sets of generators. A syzygy of ‫ ܯ‬is an element ሺܽଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ܽ௡ ሻ ‫ܴ א‬௡ for
which ܽଵ ‫ݔ‬ଵ ൅ܽଶ ‫ݔ‬ଶ ൅ ‫ ڮ‬൅ ܽ௡ ‫ݔ‬௡ ൌ Ͳ. The set of all syzygies ܵሺ‫ܯ‬ሻ of the
module ‫ ܯ‬is a submodule of ܴ௡ called the module of syzygies.
Inductively we define the ݅-th module of syzygies by ܵ଴ ሺ‫ܯ‬ሻ ൌ ‫ ܯ‬and
ܵ௜ ሺ‫ܯ‬ሻ ൌ ܵ൫ܵ௜ିଵ ሺ‫ܯ‬ሻ൯. In modern terms, Hilbert’s Syzygy theorem then
asserts that every finitely generated graded module ܵሺ‫ܯ‬ሻ ൌ ۩ஶ ௜ୀ଴ ܵ௜ ሺ‫ܯ‬ሻ
over the polynomial ring ԧሾ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ ሿ has a free resolution of length at
most ݊, that is, its ݊௧௛ syzygy is free. Now, it turns out that this is valid for
every finitely generated module (not necessarily graded) over a

24 Chapter Two
polynomial ring. Thus, we usually find the following generalization of

Hilbert’s theorem in modern algebra textbooks:
Hilbert’s syzygy theorem: Let ܴ ൌ ‫ܭ‬ሾ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ ሿ be a polynomial ring.
Every finitely generated ܴ-module ‫ ܯ‬has a finite free resolution of length
at most ݊.
Hilbert’s theorem is nowadays considered as an early result in

homological algebra and the point of departure of homological methods in
commutative algebra and algebraic geometry.
The next step and, to a certain extent the definitive one, in the entry of
invariant theory in modern abstract algebra was the work of a collaborator
and disciple of Hilbert, Hermann Weyl (1885-1955). In his book The
Classical Groups. Their Invariants and Representations, published in
1939 and widely read among mathematicians around the world, Weyl
observed that one of the main aims of the book was “to give a modern
introduction to the theory of invariants. It is high time for a rejuvenation of
the classic theory of invariants, which has fallen into on almost petrified
state.”10 In Weyl’s book, invariant theory is developed for all classical Lie
groups. More specifically, one of the main themes of Weyl’s book is the
study of the polynomial invariants for a standard classical group action, so
that classical invariant theory is viewed as a part of the theory of linear
representations of groups.
In any case, after 1893 Hilbert left his investigation in the theory of
invariants and concentrated his efforts in algebraic number theory. The
reason for this was not only that Hilbert considered that his work in the
theory of invariants had answered all the great open questions of this
discipline, but also that he and his friend Minkowski had been
commissioned by the Deutsche Mathematiker-Vereinigung (German
Mathematicians Association) (DMV), which had been founded at the
annual meeting of the Gesellschaft deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte
(Society of German Scientists and Doctors) in Bremen in 1890, to develop
a study on the state of the art of number theory.

10
Weyl 1939, vii.


Fig. 2-1 The founders of the DMV in Bremen in 1890

CHAPTER THREE
THE KÖNIGSBERG LECTURES ON GEOMETRY
In 1892 Hurwitz, who had been working as an Extraordinarius at

Königsberg for eight years, was appointed as the successor of Ferdinand
Georg Frobenius (1849-1917) at the Eidgenössische Polytechnische
Schule (Federal Polytechnical School) in Zürich.1 Hurwitz’s departure
opened the possibility for Hilbert to take over his post, as finally happened
in August of that year when the faculty unanimously voted him to succeed
Hurwitz. Almost at the same time, Minkowski received an offer to work as
an associated professor in Bonn, which he accepted at the request of
Althoff. A few months earlier, Hilbert had become engaged to Käthe
Jerosch, whom he would marry on October 12 of 1892. After ten months,
on August 11, 1893, his first and only son, Franz Hilbert, was born.
Although the best-known contributions in the three following years of
Hilbert’s academic career correspond to the field of algebraic number
theory, during his stay at Königsberg Hilbert devoted several courses to
the study of geometry, in which projective geometry occupied a central
place. This was undoubtedly one of the mainstream topics at that time,
mainly due to the conception of the geometry exposed by Felix Klein in
his famous Erlanger Programm (Erlangen Program) (1872) which placed
projective geometry at the top of the different geometries known those
days.
Even though the origins of projective geometry can be traced back to
ancient Greece and had an important impulse in the 17th century,
especially thanks to the work of Girard Desargues (1591-1661), it was not
until the 19th century that projective geometry received the definitive
impulse and became a fundamental branch of geometry and, by extension,
of mathematics. The work with which the golden age of projective
geometry began was Geometrie Descriptive of Gaspard Monge (1746-
1818). This work inspired the research on this topic of several of his
students, particularly, Jean-Victor Poncelet (1788-1867), Lazare Carnot

1
Renamed Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (The Swiss Federal Institute of
Technology) in 1911.

28 Chapter Three
Fig. 3-1 Adolf Hurwitz as an Extraordinarius in Königsberg

The Königsberg Lectures on Geometry 29
(1753-1823), Michel Chasles (1793-1880) and Charles Julien Brianchon

(1785-1864). These French mathematicians obtained their geometric
results without the use of coordinate systems or sets of equations, that is,
by synthetic methods akin to those that were usual in Euclidean geometry
until 17th century.2 In this way, the development of projective geometry
went hand in hand with a revival of synthetic geometry.
The most prominent figure in the development of projective geometry
was undoubtedly Poncelet. The basic idea of Poncelet’s research program,
as developed in the first part of his work Traité des propriétés projectives
des figures (1822), was to renew the synthetic approach to geometry of the
Ancients which tends, according to him, to study only problems attached
to a single figure. On the contrary, the consideration of “indeterminate
magnitudes” (instead of “absolute magnitudes”) and the use of algebraic
formulas in analytical geometry makes it possible to consider at once a
whole set of figures and to reason about this set by considering only one
figure. Poncelet’s idea was then to endorse geometry with a method that
allows a similar degree of generality, that is, a method by which, while
applying the traditional methods of the Ancients to a particular case,
would extend the results to all other analogous cases. To this end, Poncelet
introduced the so-called principle of continuity or “permanence of the
mathematical relations of the magnitudes considered,”3 which ensured, for
a set of correlative figures,4 the validity of a property shown in a specific
figure, beyond the changes in configuration, passages to the infinite or the
loss of reality of certain elements. So, for example, what could be asserted
of a figure that contains two intersecting lines must remain valid if the
lines become parallel–and hence the need of points at infinity. And the
same could be said of a figure in which a straight line and a curve meet or
not in the real plane–and hence the need of imaginary points.
In any case, the extension of the Euclidean space to a series of new
points and straight lines presented several problems, the first of them being
to justify the introduction of these extension elements. As we have seen,
according to Poncelet, it was necessary to postulate them in accordance

2
Analytic geometric emerged in the 17th century thanks to the contributions of
René Descartes (1596-1650) and Pierre de Fermat (1601-1655). Throughout 18th
century, the success of analytical geometry and differential geometry–which
combined Cartesian geometry with differential and integral calculus–had pushed
classical Euclidean methods to an aside.
3
Poncelet 1864, 319.
4
Two figures are correlatives if one is obtained from the other by modifying
through a “progressive and continuous movement” the relative position of its
component elements.

30 Chapter Three
with the principle of continuity in order to develop geometry from a

unified and synthetic point of view. However, this principle suffers from a
remarkable lack of rigor–as Augustin-Louis Cauchy (1789-1857), a
contemporary of Poncelet, had already noted–and turns projective
geometry into a kind of creative reorganization of Euclidean geometry.
This led Karl von Staudt (1798-1867) to try to reformulate projective
geometry and to present it more rigorously. In the preface to his work
Geometrie der Lage (Geometry of position) (1847), von Staudt exposed
clearly his intention of a purely synthetic development of geometry,
without any appeal to metric considerations:
I have tried in this work to obtain the geometry of position as an
autonomous science, for which [the concept of] measure is not required.5
Thus, for example, he defined the notion of a projective mapping without

appealing to the notion of measure of a segment or an angle by the
property of preserving harmonicity–which is defined by incidence
relations only. This approach led him to define the elements of extension
on the basis of already known concepts and relations of Euclidean
geometry, so that the projective space became a mere extension by
definition of the Euclidean space. In a nutshell, the strategy of von Staudt
consisted, instead of postulating new elements that explained the
continuity of certain properties and geometrical relations à la Poncelet, of
choosing these same forms or, rather, the abstract concepts derived from
them, like the extension elements. Thus, for example, instead of
postulating the existence of new points in infinity wherever parallel lines
meet, von Staudt defined points at infinity as the concept-object that can
be extracted from the form common to all parallel lines to a line L, namely
the concept-object “the direction of L.” Similarly, instead of postulating
the existence of new imaginary points corresponding to the intersection of
a curve with a straight line when this intersection is given by an imaginary
coordinate, he defined the imaginary points on the straight line as
“involutions with one direction.”
Despite the great advances that we can find in von Staudt’s work in the
search of rigor, the first mathematician who provided a rigorous
foundation for projective geometry was Moritz Pasch (1843-1930), who
presented, in the work Vorlesungen über die neueren Geometrie (Lessons
on modern geometry) (1882), the first serious example of axiomatization
of a branch of mathematics since Euclid (flourished c. 300 BCE). Pasch’s
Vorlesungen dealt with projective geometry, but what interests us here is

5
Von Staudt 1847, III.

Projective geometry
Plane Euclidean geometry studies the properties and the relationships

between points and straight lines in the plane. These properties (length
of the lines, size of angles, incidence, congruence, parallelism, etc.) are
preserved when the transformations considered by Euclidean geometry
are applied: the translations and rotations. But, apart from these, there
are other types of transformations such as projections. These are the
kind of transformations that, for example, we see in action when a
painter draws a picture in perspective or when a light beam projects the
shadow of an object on the wall or the floor of a room. Which are the
properties of the figures that are preserved under projective
transformations? Or, in other words, what are the projective
properties?
Consider, for example, two planes ī and H, and a point P out of
them. Let ĭ be any figure in ī and draw straight lines from P crossing
each point of ĭ. The figure formed by these points is the projection of
ĭ in H from P.
Fig. 3-2 Projection of a figure in a plane
As we can see in the figure above, the projection is usually different

from the projected figure regarding its size and shape. Indeed, although
some basic elements retain their properties after the projection (for
example, the projection of a line is another line, and the point of
intersection of two lines is projected at another point that is the
intersection of the projections of the two original lines), measurements
such as the length of the lines and the size of the angles, as well as the
cont. p. 32

32 Chapter Three
forms of the figures, are not invariant. In addition, the concept of

parallelism does not appear in projective geometry: two different lines
in the same plane meet at one point, and if these lines are parallel in the
sense of Euclidean geometry (because of being in different planes, as
shown in the above figure), then their point of intersection is in the
infinite. The plane that includes the line at the infinite containing all
the ideal points (points in the infinite) where the parallel lines intersect
is called the projective plane.
Since the properties that are preserved under projective
transformations are those of incidence–properties that are invariant
under stretching, translation or rotation of the plane௅, the notions of
distance and angle play no role in projective geometry. Hence in order
to extend the Euclidean plane to the projective plane it suffices to
begin with the affine plane and to complete it by adding certain “points
at infinity”. Let A be an affine plane. For each line l in A, we will
denote by [l] the pencil of lines parallel to l, and we will call [l] an
ideal point, or point at infinity, in the direction of l. We write P* = [l].
We define the completion S of A as follows. The points of S are the
points of A, plus all the ideal points of A. A line in S is either a) an
ordinary line l of A, plus the ideal point P* = [l] of l, or b) the “line at
infinity”, consisting of all the ideal points of A. It is then easy to prove
that S is a projective plane in the sense of the following:
Definition. A projective plane S is a set, whose elements are

called points, and a set of subsets, called lines, satisfying the
following four axioms.
P1. Two distinct points P, Q of S are incident to one and only
one line.
P2. Any two lines meet in at least one point.
P3. There exist three points not incident to the same line.
P4. Every line is incident to at least three points.
From these axioms the “duals” of P1, P3 and P4, which are obtained
from the above statements by interchanging the words “point” and
“line”, can be demonstrated. Now, from P1, P2, P3 and their dual
statements the following can be proved:
Theorem (Principle of duality): In any projective plane

S consider an arbitrary statement, expressed in terms of points,
cont. p. 33

lines and incidence, and which has been proven from the
axioms. Then the dual statement, obtained when interchanging
the words “point” and “line,” is a theorem as well.
One of the more intriguing theorems of projective geometry is

Desargues’ Theorem:
Fig. 3-3 Desargues’ theorem
It was precisely the theorem of Desargues that motivated the

development of projective geometry by Jean-Victor Poncelet. It asserts
that if two triangles ‫ ܥܤܣ‬and ‫ܣ‬ᇱ ‫ܤ‬ᇱ ‫ ܥ‬ᇱ are in perspective from a point ܱ
and the lines ‫ ܤܣ‬and ‫ܣ‬ᇱ ‫ܤ‬ᇱ meet at ܴ, the lines ‫ ܥܣ‬and ‫ܣ‬ᇱ ‫ ܥ‬ᇱ meet at ܵ,
and the lines ‫ ܥܤ‬and ‫ܤ‬ᇱ ‫ ܥ‬ᇱ meet at ܶ, then the points ܴǡ ܵܶ are
incident to the same line. This is true in three-dimensional Euclidean
space provided that no two of these lines are parallel. If this last case
occurs, there will be only two points of intersection instead of three,
and the theorem should be modified to include the result that these two
points will be on a line parallel to the two lines. Instead of modifying
the theorem to cover this special case, Poncelet modified the Euclidean
space by postulating points at infinity. In this new projective space,
each straight line has an added point at infinity and all parallel lines
have an intersection point.

34 Chapter Three
his conception of the axiomatic method.

For Pasch geometry is a natural science and so its purpose is to deduce
from basic concepts (Grundbegriffe) and basic propositions (Grundsätze)
obtained from ordinary spatial experience the laws of more complex
phenomena. Once the basic concepts and propositions have been posed,
the definitions of the derived concepts must be reduced to the basic
concepts and the theorems should be exclusively deduced from the
fundamental propositions and previously deduced theorems. However,
although fundamental concepts and propositions should be derived from
experience, deductiveness requires that meaning is left apart:
Whenever geometry has to be really deductive, the process of inferring
must be independent of the meaning of the geometrical concepts as well as
of the figures. The only things that matter are the relations between
geometrical concepts, as they are established in the theorems and
definitions used.6
Thus, Pasch’s approach combined a formal stance regarding the validity of

mathematical deductions (deductivist methodology) with a commitment to
the empirical origin of the basic concepts of geometry (empiricist
epistemology). As we shall later see this combination of formalism and
empiricism will also be an important feature of Hilbert’s early approach to
geometry.
In any case, the decisive step in the consecration of projective
geometry was the publication of Felix Klein’s Erlanger Programm. In this
address to the University of Erlangen, Klein unified most of the existing
geometries, including non-Euclidean geometry, by showing that they
were special cases of projective geometry. According to Klein’s
conception, geometry could be considered as the study of those properties
of figures that remain invariant under the action of a specific group of
transformations. Therefore, to classify the geometries it is only necessary
to classify the groups of transformations. The larger the group of
transformations (the fewer restrictions imposed on them), the more
fundamental is geometry. Thus, from the point of view of Klein, Euclidean
geometry was only a special case of affine geometry and the same
occurred with affine geometry with regards to projective geometry. In
short, according to Klein, projective geometry possessed conceptual and
intuitive primacy over the other geometries since the projective
transformations were the most general.

6
Pasch 1882, 98; emphasis in original.

Projektive Geometrie (Projective Geometry) was precisely the title of

Hilbert’s first course on geometry, taught during the summer semester of
1891. Hilbert’s lecture course was quite conventional and the presentation
that he made in it of projective geometry was very similar to that one
found in the work of Theodor Reye (1838-1919) Die Geometrie der Lage
(1886), which was based on the homonymous work by von Staudt. Indeed,
Hilbert’s lectures followed the point of view of von Staudt: projective
geometry is developed in a synthetic way, that is, without following, as far
as possible, metric considerations.
Although the structure of Hilbert’s lectures was very similar to that of
Reye’s book, Hilbert’s presentation of projective geometry was much
more formal and rigorous than Reye’s. Hilbert, for example, introduced
only the concepts, definitions and theorems strictly necessary for the
development of projective geometry. And, in general, the deductive
relationships between the different theorems were clearly exposed and
discussed. A clear example of this is the proof that Hilbert offered of the
Desargues’s theorem, much clearer and briefer than Reye’s.
In the Introduction (Einleitung) to the lectures of 1891 we find one of
the first references of Hilbert to the axiomatic method. According to
Hilbert, there are three main branches or ways of approaching elemental
geometry: intuitive geometry, which is based on the “simple facts of
intuition;” axiomatic geometry, which investigates the axioms of geometry
underlying the intuition and the axiomatic systems obtained when one or
more axioms are left out; and analytical geometry, which reduces
geometry to analysis in virtue of the correspondence between the points of
a straight line and the real numbers. According to Hilbert, the value of
intuitive geometry is merely aesthetic or pedagogical, while axiomatic
geometry is especially important from the epistemological point of view.
Finally, Hilbert argues, analytical geometry is the most important from the
mathematical and scientific perspective. In any case, although Hilbert
lectures of 1891 dealt with the first branch, all its subsequent courses
would be inscribed in the second. Another point of interest in the
Introduction of the 1891 course was its characterization of geometry as a
natural science in which, unlike other branches of pure mathematics, the
recourse to sensorial intuition (Anschauung) is essential. “Geometry,
Hilbert says, is the theory of the properties of space,” which “is not a
product of my reflection. Rather, it´s given to me through the senses. I
need my senses to understand its properties.”7

7
Hilbert 2004, 22.

36 Chapter Three
In September 1891, Hilbert attended a lecture given by Hermann

Wiener (1857-1939) at a DMV meeting in Halle. The conference dealt
with the foundations of geometry and in it Wiener defended the axiomatic
approach to arithmetic and geometry. In particular, Wiener raised the
possibility of an axiomatic development of projective geometry based on
Desargues’s and Pascal’s theorems. According to Hilbert’s first doctoral
student, Otto Blumenthal (1876-1944), the conference had a great impact
on Hilbert. Actually, it seems to have been precisely after this conference
that Hilbert made his famous statement that it should be possible to replace
“point, line and plane” for “chair, table and beer mug” without affecting
the validity of the theorems that are proved. As we shall see later, this
statement, according to which the concepts of an axiomatic theory must
not denote specific objects (and therefore do not need to have an intuitive
content), would become a central aspect of Hilbert’s formalism in the
following years.
In April 1893, Hilbert wrote to Minkowski: “I am now getting
familiarized with non-Euclidean geometry, because I want to give a course
about it the next semester.”8 This would happen during the summer
semester of 1893, but the lack of audience did not allow Hilbert to give the
course announced and he had to postpone it until the summer semester of
1894. The lectures for this course were very adequately entitled
Grundlagen der Geometrie (Foundations of Geometry), since this was the
first course in which Hilbert seriously dealt with the foundations of some
branch of mathematics and, specifically, geometry.
The aim of the course was to produce a system of axioms as pure and
accurate as possible of non-Euclidean and Euclidean geometry. Hilbert
had described the axiomatic approach of geometry in the lectures
corresponding to the 1891 course on projective geometry as the
investigation of the “axioms underlying the facts presented by the
geometry of intuition” and “the systematic investigation of the geometries
that arise when one or more of these axioms is set aside.”9 Although in the
lectures of 1894 Hilbert was not interested in this second level of research
characteristic of the axiomatic method, he dealt with the first level of
investigation mentioned above. Hence this lecture course not only
represented an axiomatic presentation of geometry but was the first
axiomatic analysis that Hilbert made of this science. This means that
Hilbert was not only worried about axiomatizing Euclidean and non-
Euclidean geometry, for which he closely follows the work of Pasch in

8
Cited from Toepell (2000, 214).
9
Hilbert 2004, 22.

1882 on this subject, but also worried about investigating these axioms to
a certain extent. He analysed, for example, different points of view of the
theory of parallelism and the independence of the Parallels Axiom,
exhibiting a spherical model for hyperbolic geometry in which the other
axioms are fulfilled, but in which “through a point there is an infinite
number of straight lines parallel to a given straight line.”10
The lectures of 1894 opened again with the characterization of
geometry as a natural science, but with a notable difference with respect to
the lectures of 1891. Geometry is no longer defined now as “the theory of
the properties of space,” otherwise the physical properties of space would
be part of geometry, but rather as the science that deals with the “facts that
determine the external form of things”, which he calls “geometric facts.”
The task of geometry is then, like any other natural science, to arrange and
describe the facts belonging to its field of study “by means of certain
concepts, which are linked to each other by the laws of logic.”11 However,
Hilbert considered that there was a significant difference between the
degree of development of geometry and other natural sciences. In
geometry, unlike other natural sciences, such as optics, the theory of
electricity or mechanics, all (geometric) facts can be derived from the
axioms, while in the rest of natural sciences they are still discovering new
facts. In this sense, Hilbert says, geometry is the “most perfect, most
complete” of natural sciences.
Up to this point Hilbert remained at the same level as his colleague
Pasch, who had also claimed that his axioms were derived from
experience. But Hilbert will go further than Pasch and will now ask if the
axioms are independent and complete:
The problem of our colleague [Pasch] is this: what are the necessary and
sufficient conditions, independent of each other, that one must put to a
system of things, so that each property of these things corresponds to a
geometric fact and vice versa, so that by means of this system of things a
complete description and arrangement of all the geometrical facts is
possible?12
Thus, the lectures of 1894 already contained the essential features of

Hilbert’s point of view on how axiomatic analysis should proceed,
namely: providing a scheme or network of concepts obtained by

10
Ibid., 120.
11
Ibid., 72. This Hilbertian characterization of geometry as a natural science was
very influenced by the Heinrich Hertz (1857-1894) characterization of natural
sciences from his Bildtheorie.
12
Ibid., 72-73.

38 Chapter Three
abstraction from the geometrical facts, corresponding to the axioms to the

basic geometric facts. The problem was then to find a set of axioms that
were mutually independent and complete, i.e., that were not redundant and
that allowed the derivation of all the theorems (corresponding to
geometrical facts) in the scheme of concepts (axiomatic system).

CHAPTER FOUR
THE ALGEBRAIC THEORY OF NUMBERS
The same year, 1892, in which Hilbert had been named Extraordinarius
professor at Königsberg, Lindemann received an offer from Munich. This
meant that the position that he had occupied at Konigsberg for ten years
remained vacant and opened the possibility for Hilbert to become his
successor. The Faculty of Philosophy, to which the mathematics
professors were ascribed, selected Hilbert and three other mathematicians
as official candidates for the position and sent the list to Berlin. The
following year, at the age of thirty-one, Hilbert became Ordinarius
(ordentlicher) professor at Königsberg University.
Friedrich Althoff, who had been the representative for the University
of the Royal Prussian Ministry of Ecclesiastical, Educational and Medical
Affairs since 1882 and would become, in 1897, the ministerial director of
Universities and Higher Education, not only appointed Hilbert as
Ordinarius under very favourable conditions, but also asked for advice
about who could become his successor as Extraordinarius professor. After
some complicated personal arrangements, Hilbert succeed in bringing his
friend Minkowski, who was then a Privatdozent in Bonn, to Königsberg
for Easter 1894. In this way, the two friends could work together again and
resume their daily walks for one year, since at Easter 1895 Hilbert moved
to Göttingen.
During his years as an Extraordinarius and Ordinarius professor in
Königsberg and his first years in Göttingen, Hilbert chiefly devoted his
work to number theory. The first important result in this direction was the
unification and simplification of the proofs by Hermite and Lindemann of
the transcendence of ʌ and e respectively. This was during the winter of
1892 to 1893; after this Hilbert devoted all his efforts to the theory of
number fields. The first contribution in this direction was the conference
“Zwei neue Beweise für die Zerlegbarkeit der Zahlen eines Körpers in
Primideale” (“Two new proofs of the divisibility of numbers of a field in a
prime ideal”) held in September 1893 in the Congress of the DMV at
Munich.

40 Chapter Four
It was precisely on occasion of this meeting that Hilbert and

Minkowski were asked to write a Referat or report on the current
development of number theory. It is worth noting the fact that Hilbert was
requested to produce a report on the state of the art of a branch of
mathematics as important as number theory, for this clearly shows that
Hilbert was already considered an authority in this field, even though he
had just begun publishing articles about it.
The plan of the two friends and colleagues was to divide up the work,
leaving to Minkowski the elementary parts of number theory like
continued fractions, quadratic forms, and the geometry of numbers. Both
started working on the report in 1894. Minkowski, however, abandoned
the project very soon, because he was too busy writing his Geometrie der
Zahlen (The Geometry of Numbers), which he had begun in 1890 and was
partially published in 1896, so the report became exclusively the
responsibility of Hilbert. Although in the end only Hilbert’s part was
actually written, Minkowski did comment on Hilbert’s manuscript and
read the galley proofs.
As noted by J. J. Gray, number theory was a German subject: “From
Gauss to Kummer and Kronecker, from Gauss to Dirichlet and then
Dedekind, and thence to Hilbert and Minkowski, algebraic number theory
had been largely German, largely indeed Prussian.”1 The point of
departure of this German tradition was undoubtedly Gauss’ masterpiece
Disquisitiones Arithmeticae (1801). In this work, Gauss raised different
topics such as congruence, quadratic reciprocity and its generalization to
higher powers, quadratic forms and cyclotomy, topics which would
become the starting point for the research of authors of the calibre of
Kronecker, Weber, Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet (1805-1859),
Ferdinand Gotthold Eisenstein (1823-1852), Ernst Kummer (1810-1893),
Hilbert or Minkowski. As Felix Klein pointed out in his classic work
Vorlesungen Über die Entwicklung der Mathematik im 19. Jahrhundert
(Lectures on the development of mathematics in the nineteenth century),
“in the Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, Gauss created modern number theory
itself and fixed all its future development.”2
All the previous authors were certainly inspired by the issues raised by
Gauss’ Disquisitiones Arithmeticae, although they reconsidered them in
very different ways and extended them in often divergent directions.
Indeed, as Gauss himself had predicted, there were numerous internal
connections between these subjects and between them and other branches

1
Gray 2000, 38.
2
Klein 1926, 26.

The Algebraic Theory of Numbers 41
of mathematics, which were studied by the mathematicians mentioned

above, often from different and even opposed points of view (this would
be the case, for example, of Kronecker and Dedekind). One result of this
was that the definition of some key concepts of algebraic number theory,
such as class field (KlassenKörper) or ring (Ring), depended too much on
the focus or interests of each author. So, it seemed logical that the DMV
commissioned Hilbert and Minkowski to write a report on the state of the
art of number theory.
One of the more significant topics for the development of algebraic
number theory dealt with by Gauss in his Disquisitiones was that of power
residues, particularly quadratic residues, and the problem of generalizing
the law of quadratic reciprocity to higher orders. It could be said, as Erich
Hecke (1887-1947) put it in his Vorlesungen über die Theorie der
algebraischen Zahlen (Lectures on the Theory of Algebraic Numbers), that
“modern number theory dates from the discovery of the reciprocity law.”3
The origin of the research in number theory which led to the discovery
of the reciprocity law can be found in the work of Pierre de Fermat. In his
researches on number theory, Fermat was much inspired by the problems
posed by Diophantus of Alexandria (flourished c. CE 250) in his famous
work Arithmetica. For example, Problem 9 in Book V, asks for an odd
number to be expressed as a sum of two squares, with several side
conditions. And in most of the problems of Books IV and V, Diophantus
supposes that every whole number is either a square, or a sum of two,
three or four squares. In a letter from 1658 to Sir Kenelm Digby (an
English adventurer and double agent), Fermat announces that he has
proven Diophantus’s supposition and that he “can add a number of very
celebrated propositions for which I also possess irrefutable proof. For
example: Every prime number of the form Ͷ݊ ൅ ͳ is the sum of two
squares, such as ͷǡ ͳ͵ǡ ͳ͹ǡ ʹͻǡ ͵͹ǡ Ͷͳǡ ݁‫ܿݐ‬. Every prime number of the form
͵݊ ൅ ͳ is the sum of a square and the triple of another square, for instance,
͹ǡ ͳ͵ǡ ͳͻǡ ͵ͳǡ ͵͹ǡ Ͷ͵ǡ ݁‫ܿݐ‬. Every prime number of the form ͺ݊ ൅ ͳ or
ͺ݊ ൅ ͵ is the sum of a square and double another square, such as
͵ǡ ͳͳǡ ͳ͹ǡ ͳͻǡ Ͷͳǡ Ͷ͵ǡ ݁‫ܿݐ‬.”4

3
Hecke 1923, 59.
4
Cited from Knoebel et alia (2007, 233). Translated into the language of
congruences, later introduced by Gauss, Fermat assertions become (for a prime ‫݌‬
and integers ‫ݔ‬ǡ ‫)ݕ‬:
‫ ݌‬ൌ ‫ ݔ‬ଶ ൅ ‫ ݕ‬ଶ if and only if ‫ͳ ؠ ݌‬ሺͶሻ (‫ʹ ് ݌‬ሻ,
‫ ݌‬ൌ ‫ ݔ‬ଶ ൅ ͵‫ ݕ‬ଶ if and only if ‫ͳ ؠ ݌‬ሺ͵ሻ (‫ʹ ് ݌‬ǡ͵ǡ
‫ ݌‬ൌ ‫ ݔ‬ଶ ൅ ʹ‫ ݕ‬ଶ if and only if ‫ͳ ؠ ݌‬ǡ ͵ሺͺሻ (‫ʹ ് ݌‬ሻ.

42 Chapter Four
Unfortunately, no proofs of these results have been found in Fermat’s

correspondence. Indeed, much of the work of proving Fermat’s
conjectures was left to Leonard Euler (1707-1783). After discovering
proofs for many of Fermat’s claims about sums of squares, Euler turned
his attention to the following more general question:
For a given nonzero integer ܽ, which prime numbers can be represented in
the form ‫ ݔ‬ଶ ൅ ܽ‫ ݕ‬ଶ , with ‫ ݔ‬and ‫ ݕ‬positive integers?
(For the cases ܽ ൌ ͳǡ ʹ and ͵, a solution was essentially claimed by

Fermat, as the letter to Digby quoted above shows). Another claim of
Fermat’s, namely that a sum ‫ ݔ‬ଶ ൅ ܽ‫ ݕ‬ଶ , with ‫ ݔ‬and ‫ ݕ‬relatively prime
positive integers, can never have a divisor of the form Ͷ݊ െ ͳ no matter
how ‫ ݔ‬and ‫ ݕ‬are chosen, suggested a related problem to Euler:
For a given nonzero integer ܽ, find all nontrivial prime divisors of
numbers of the form ‫ ݔ‬ଶ ൅ ܽ‫ ݕ‬ଶ , with ‫ ݔ‬and ‫ ݕ‬positive integers.
It turns out that the nontrivial prime divisors p of numbers of the form
‫ ݔ‬ଶ ൅ ܽ‫ ݕ‬ଶ are precisely the odd primes p for which െܽ is a nonzero
quadratic residue.5 Therefore, to solve the above problem Euler needed to
find some procedure which allowed finding these prime numbers. Since
for any odd prime there are ሺ‫ ݌‬െ ͳሻΤʹ quadratic residues and ሺ‫ ݌‬െ ͳሻΤʹ
quadratic non-residues, and the quadratic residues are congruent modulo ‫݌‬
to the integers ͳଶ ,ʹଶ ǡ ͵ଶ ǡ ǥ ǡ ሺሺ‫ ݌‬െ ͳሻΤʹሻଶ , Euler suggested in 1748 the
following criterion (in modern notation):6
Let ܽ be any integer and ‫ ݌‬an odd prime not dividing ܽ. Then ܽ is a
quadratic residue of ‫ ݌‬if, and only if, ܽሺ௣ିଵሻΤଶ ‫ͳ ؠ‬ሺ‫݌‬ሻ and is a
quadratic non-residue of ‫ ݌‬if, and only if, ܽሺ௣ିଵሻΤଶ ‫ ؠ‬െͳሺ‫݌‬ሻ.
This criterion is known today as Euler’s criterion and was Euler’s first
important result for determining the quadratic residues of a prime ‫݌‬. Even
though Euler’s criterion is very useful to determine whether a given
integer is a quadratic residue or not, it is not so helpful when we wish to
determine all the quadratic residues of a given prime. It was not until

5
This is so because (using the congruence notation introduced later by Gauss) if
‫ ݔ‬ଶ ൅ ܽ‫ ݕ‬ଶ ൌ ݉‫݌‬, since ‫ ݕ‬is relatively prime to ‫݌‬, we can find an integer ‫ ݖ‬such that
‫ͳ ؠ ݖݕ‬ሺ‫݌‬ሻ. Hence, multiplying ‫ ݔ‬ଶ ൅ ܽ‫ ݕ‬ଶ by ‫ ݖ‬ଶ , we obtain െܽ ‫ؠ‬
ሺ‫ݖݔ‬ሻଶ ሺ‫݌‬ሻ. Conversely, if െܽ ‫݊ ؠ‬ଶ ሺ‫݌‬ሻ with ݊ non-divisible by ‫݌‬, then
െܽ ൌ ݊ଶ ൅ ݉‫ ݌‬for some integer ݉, and so ሺെ݉ሻ‫ ݌‬ൌ ݊ଶ ൅ ܽ ൉ ͳଶ .
6
Lemmermeyer (2000, 4) cites two papers, E134 and E262 in the Euler Archive.

1773-75 that Euler stated a theorem equivalent to the quadratic reciprocity

law, which provided the solution to the divisor problem, although he
wasn’t able to prove it.7
Joseph Louis Lagrange, who was the successor of Euler at the
Academy of Sciences in Berlin, made the next step in that he proposed to
consider general quadratic forms, i.e., expressions as ܽ‫ ݔ‬ଶ ൅ ܾ‫ ݕݔ‬൅ ܿ‫ ݕ‬ଶ ,
rather than quadratic expressions of the form ‫ ݔ‬ଶ ൅ ܽ‫ ݕ‬ଶ , as the proper
object of study in order to get a coherent theory of quadratic residues. As a
result of this, Lagrange laid the foundations of the theory of quadratic
forms, which would become one of the major topics of Gauss’s
Disquisitiones. Lagrange was also able to prove a lot of theorems about
the representability of primes in the form ‫ ݔ‬ଶ ൅ ܽ‫ ݕ‬ଶ and, most important,
the claim that every positive integer can be written as a sum of four integer
squares.
However, the major advances in the study of the problem of
representing prime numbers by quadratic forms were done by the French
mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre (1752-1833). To solve this
problem, he presented a first version of the law of reciprocity in 1788. Ten
years later he introduced the Legendre symbol:
Since the analogous quantities ܰ ሺ௖ିଵሻΤଶ will occur often in our researches,
ே
we shall employ the abbreviation ቀ ቁ for expressing the residue that
௖
ܰ ሺ௖ିଵሻΤଶ gives upon division by ܿ, and which, according to what we just
have seen, only assumes the values ൅ͳ or െͳ.8
This symbol enabled him to state the law of quadratic reciprocity in terms
completely analogous to those in which it is stated today:

7
In modern notation, Euler’s theorem says that:
1. If ‫ͳ ؠ ݌‬ሺͶሻ is prime and ‫ ݔ ؠ ݌‬ଶ ሺ‫ݏ‬ሻ for some prime s, then
േ‫ ݕ ؠ ݏ‬ଶ ሺ‫݌‬ሻ.
2. If ‫͵ ؠ ݌‬ሺͶሻ is prime and െ‫ ݔ ؠ ݌‬ଶ ሺ‫ݏ‬ሻ for some prime s, then
‫ ݕ ؠ ݏ‬ଶ ሺ‫݌‬ሻ and െ‫ ݕ ء ݏ‬ଶ ሺ‫݌‬ሻ.
3. If ‫͵ ؠ ݌‬ሺͶሻ is prime and െ‫ ݔ ء ݌‬ଶ ሺ‫ݏ‬ሻ for some prime s, then
െ‫ ݕ ؠ ݏ‬ଶ ሺ‫݌‬ሻ and ‫ ݕ ء ݏ‬ଶ ሺ‫݌‬ሻ.
4. If ‫ͳ ؠ ݌‬ሺͶሻ is prime and ‫ ݔ ء ݌‬ଶ ሺ‫ݏ‬ሻ for some prime s, then
േ‫ ݕ ؠ ݏ‬ଶ ሺ‫݌‬ሻ.
In fact, his theorem “is equivalent to the version of the quadratic reciprocity law
that is best known today and that was formulated by Legendre and Gauss.”
(Lemmermeyer 2000, 5).
8
Lemmermeyer 2000, 6.

44 Chapter Four
Whatever the prime numbers ݉ and ݊ are, if they are not both of the form
௡ ௠
Ͷ‫ ݔ‬െ ͳ, one always has ቀ௠ቁ ൌ ቀ ௡ ቁ ; and if both are of the form Ͷ‫ ݔ‬െ ͳ,
௡ ௠
one has ቀ ቁ ൌ െ ቀ ቁ. These two general cases are contained in the
௠ ௡
೙షభ ೘షభ
௡ ௠
formula ቀ ቁ ൌ ሺെͳሻ మ
Ǥ
మ ቀ ቁ.9
௠ ௡
Although Legendre tried several times to give a complete proof of this

law, there always remained some gap to be fulfilled. The honour of giving
a complete proof of the law of quadratic reciprocity was for Carl Friedrich
Gauss, who proved it in several ways in his Disquisitiones Arithmeticae.
After having introduced in the first three sections the fundamentals of the
theory of congruences, in Section 4 Gauss develops the theory of
quadratic residues. This section culminates in the “fundamental theorem”
(art. 131) of this theory, from which “can be deduced almost everything
that can be said about quadratic residues.”10 This is the law of quadratic
reciprocity, which Gauss states in the following guise:
If ‫ ݌‬is a prime number of the form Ͷ݊ ൅ ͳ, then so will be ൅‫݌‬, however if
‫ ݌‬is of the form Ͷ݊ ൅ ͵, then െ‫ ݌‬will be a [quadratic] residue or non-
nonresidue of any prime number which is a residue or nonresidue of ‫݌‬.11
After 1824, Gauss also investigated cubic, biquadratic (quartic) and octic
reciprocity and formulated statements for cubic and biquadratic
reciprocity. He noticed that the statement of cubic and biquadratic laws
requires the fields of cube or fourth roots of unity. For biquadratic
reciprocity Gauss considered the ring Ժሾ݅ሿ ൌ ሼܽ ൅ ܾ݅ǣ ܽǡ ܾ ‫ א‬Ժሽ, which is
now known as the Gaussian Integers and is regarded by many historians
as the first appearance of algebraic numbers.
Gauss provided a proof for cubic reciprocity and he also announced a
proof of the biquadratic reciprocity law, but he never published them. This
stimulated the work on reciprocity laws for small degrees, particularly
cubic, quartic and quintic. The first public and complete proofs for the
cubic and quartic residues were published in 1844 by Eisenstein, although
Jacobi had already announced a reciprocity law for them in his 1836-37
Königsberg lectures. To generalize his results to higher residues Eisenstein
was confronted with the problem of the absence of unique factorization,
which was solved in 1845 by the introduction by Kummer of his “ideal
numbers.” This enabled Eisenstein to prove a special case of what is now

9
Ibid.
10
Gauss 1801, 99.
11
Ibid.

The law of quadratic reciprocity

If ܽ is an integer and p a prime number that does not divide ܽ, we say
that ܽ is a quadratic residue of ‫ ݌‬if there is an integer ‫ ݔ‬such that ‫݌‬
divides ‫ ݔ‬ଶ െ ܽ. Equivalently, if we write ܽ ‫ܾ ؠ‬ሺ݉‫݌݀݋‬ሻ (read: ܽ is
congruent with b modulo ‫ )݌‬to denote that ܽ െ ܾ is a multiple of ‫݌‬,
then we have the following definition:
Let ܽ be an integer and ‫ ݌‬a prime number that does not divide
ܽ, then ܽ is a quadratic residue modulo ‫ ݌‬if the quadratic
congruence ‫ ݔ‬ଶ ‫ܽ ؠ‬ሺ݉‫݌݀݋‬ሻ has a solution. Otherwise, ܽ is
called a quadratic non-residue modulo ‫݌‬.
If ‫ ݌‬is a prime odd number and a is an integer that is not divisible by ‫݌‬,
௔
then the Legendre´s symbol, denoted by ቀ ቁ indicates whether a is a
௣
quadratic residue modulo ‫ ݌‬or not. If it is, then Legendre’s symbol is
equal to ͳ; if it is not, then it is equal to െͳ. The law of quadratic
reciprocity answers the question: When is an integer a square modulo a
prime ‫݌‬, i.e., a quadratic residue modulo ‫ ?݌‬In particular, this law
states that for any odd primes ‫݌‬ǡ ‫ݍ‬:
௣ ௤
If ‫ͳ ؠ ݌‬ሺͶሻ or ‫ͳ ؠ ݍ‬ሺͶሻ, then ቀ ቁ ൌ ቀ ቁ,
௤ ௣
௣ ௤
If ‫ ؠ ݌‬െͳሺͶሻ or ‫ ؠ ݍ‬െͳሺͶሻ, then ቀ ቁ ൌ െ ቀ ቁ.
௤ ௣
In the first case, ‫ ݌‬and ‫ ݍ‬are either both quadratic residues or else non-
residues each with respect to the other. In the second case, one of them
is a quadratic residue and the other one a non-residue. In a more
succinct way, we can reformulate these relationships as:
Law of quadratic reciprocity: if ‫ ݌‬and ‫ ݍ‬are odd distinct prime

numbers, then
ሺ೛షభሻሺ೜షభሻ
௣ ௤
ቀ ቁ ቀ ቁ ൌ ሺെͳሻ ర .
௤ ௣
Moreover, we have
೛షభ ೛మ షభ
ିଵ ଶ
ቀ ቁ ൌ ሺെͳሻ మ and ቀ ቁ ൌ ሺെͳሻ ఴ ;
௣ ௣
These are called the first and second supplementary law, respectively.
௔
It follows easily from the law of quadratic reciprocity that ቀ ቁ depends
௣
cont. p. 46

46 Chapter Four
on the residue class of ‫ ݌‬mod Ͷܽ.

Generalizing the definition of quadratic residue, we will say that
ܽ ‫ Ͳ ء‬is a residue of power ݇ modulo ‫ ݌‬if ‫ ݔ‬௞ ‫ܽ ؠ‬ሺ‫݌‬ሻ has a
solution, that is, if ܽ has a ݇-th root modulo ‫݌‬. In particular, we will
say that ܽ is a cubical residue if ‫ ݔ‬ଷ ‫ܽ ؠ‬ሺ‫݌‬ሻ has solution and that
ܽ is a biquadratic residue if ‫ ݔ‬ସ ‫ܽ ؠ‬ሺ‫݌‬ሻ has solution.
In order to formulate the biquadratic or quartic of reciprocity, one
needs an “infinite enlargement” of the integers, namely the ring
Ժሾ݅ሿ ൌ ሼܽ ൅ ܾ݅ǣ ܽǡ ܾ ‫ א‬Ժሽ of Gaussian integers. For these integers, we
have the following:
Law of quartic reciprocity: Let ߨǡ ߣ ‫ א‬Ժሾ݅ሿ be primary primes,

i.e., assume that ߨ ‫ͳ ؠ ߣ ؠ‬ሺʹ ൅ ʹ݅ሻ; then
ߨ ேగିଵ ேఒିଵ ߣ
ቂ ቃ ൌ ሺെͳሻ ସ Ǥ ସ ൤ ൨Ǥ
ߣ ߨ
(ܰߣ is the norm of ߣ, i.e. if ߣ ൌ ܽ ൅ ܾ݅, then ܰߣ ൌ ܽଶ ൅ ܾଶ ). There are
also analogues of the first and second supplementary laws for quartic
residues. A similar, although simpler, law holds for the cubic residue
symbols and primary primes in Ժሾ‫݌‬ሿ, where ‫ ݌‬is a primitive cube root
of unity.
In all the above cases, the word “reciprocity” comes from the fact
that these laws relate the solvability of the congruence ‫ ݔ‬௞ ‫݌ ؠ‬ሺ‫ݍ‬ሻ
to that of ‫ ݔ‬௞ ‫ݍ ؠ‬ሺ‫݌‬ሻ.
called Eisenstein’ reciprocity law. The quintic case had to wait for
Kummer who also stated a reciprocity law valid in all regular cyclotomic
fields. Hilbert did the next step by reinterpreting the quadratic reciprocity
law and generalizing it to arbitrary algebraic number fields in terms of the
so-called “Hilbert symbol.”
The fields of cyclotomic integers were central not only in the
investigation of higher reciprocity laws but also in the study of Fermat’s
Last Theorem. Both problems were of interest to Kummer and to make
noteworthy progress it was necessary to establish unique factorization in
the fields of cyclotomic integers. This problem was finally solved by him
in the 1840s with the introduction of a new kind of complex number which
he called “ideal complex numbers” (in analogy with “ideal” objects in

geometry, such as points at infinity). Kummer’s major result was the proof
that every element in the field of cyclotomic integers is a unique product
of “ideal primes.”
By the middle of the century considerable experience with number
fields such as quadratic fields and cyclotomic fields had been acquired.
This put the study of these algebraic number fields in the foreground. The
first problem found while developing an arithmetic theory of an algebraic
field of numbers ॶ was to choose a subset of ॶ, the algebraic integers of
ॶ, which could play a role in ॶ similar to that played by the integers inԷ.
In their study of biquadratic and cubic reciprocity Gauss, Jacobi,
Eisenstein and Kummer employed several types of algebraic integers, but
only Richard Dedekind (1831-1916) was able to define this concept in
1871–taking advantage of an important result proved by Eisenstein in
1850.
The main problem in order to elaborate an arithmetic theory for
algebraic number fields was to find a theory of divisibility for these fields.
Kummer’s theory of divisibility was brilliant, but the fundamental
concepts of ideal number and ideal prime were not intrinsically defined.
Moreover, his theory only applied to cyclotomic integers. The immediate
task was then to build a divisibility theory in which the fundamental
concepts were clearly defined and would apply to more general domains
of algebraic integers. This task was done independently by Dedekind and
Kronecker.12
Dedekind formulated his theory of divisibility by means of ideals, an
approach that was soon widely accepted. In Supplements X and XI to the
second edition of Dirichlet’s Vorlesungen über Zahlentheorie (Lessons on
Number Theory) (1863), Dedekind formulated his foundations for
algebraic number theory, which incorporated the concepts that would
become the core of modern presentations of the topic, such as, for
example, the concepts of domain of rationality (a subset of complex
numbers which is closed under the four arithmetic operations), algebraic
field of numbers, algebraic integer, ideal, module, or lattice. It is generally
accepted that the definitive transformation of algebraic number theory into
a general study of algebraic fields of numbers, and so not limited to
quadratic fields or to cyclotomic fields, took place in the work of Richard
Dedekind. At the same time, Kronecker, a disciple of Kummer and
doctoral student of Dirichlet, was making fundamental contributions to the

12
A third approach was that of the Russian mathematician Yegor Zolotarev (1847-
1878), who used the notion of exponential valuation for his theory. This was
independently developed by Hensel, but it became accepted only in the 1920s due
to the results of Hasse about quadratic forms.

48 Chapter Four
Algebraic numbers and algebraic fields of numbers

Algebraic numbers are the roots of polynomial equations with rational
coefficients. More concretely, an algebraic number Į is a complex
number that satisfies a polynomial equation ߙ௡ ‫ ݔ‬௡ ൅ ߙ௡ିଵ ‫ ݔ‬௡ିଵ ൅
ǥ ൅ ߙ଴ ൌ Ͳ with rational coefficients (or, equivalently by clearing
denominators, integer coefficients) not all of them equal to 0. They are
the essential elements of the so-called algebraic fields of numbers.
An algebraic field of numbers ॶ is a subfield of the complex
numbers ԧ that is a finite degree extension of the rational numbers Է,
that is to say, ॶ has a finite dimension as a vector space over Է. Now,
every algebraic field of numbers ॶ is of the form Էሺߙଵ ǡ ߙଶ ǡ ǥ ǡ ߙ௡ ሻ,
where the ߙ௜ are algebraic numbers. Indeed, they are of the formॶ ൌ
Էሺߙሻ , for an algebraic number Į; that is to say, every element ofॶ is
a rational function of Į with rational coefficients (that is, a polynomial
in Į). For example,Է itself is an algebraic field of numbers, but Թ or ԧ
are not (since they have infinite dimension as vector spaces over Է).
Some well-known examples of non-trivial algebraic number fields are
the quadratic fields Է൫ξ݉൯, where ݉ ‫ א‬Ժ is not a perfect square, and
the cyclotomic fields Էሺߞ௡ ሻ, where ߞ௡ is a primitive ݊ root of unity
(i.e., ߞ௡ ൌ ሺʹߨ݅Τ݊ሻ).
The set of algebraic numbers is a field (this simply means that the
sum, difference, product and quotient of two algebraic numbers is
again an algebraic number), usually represented by ८. Indeed, ८ is a
proper subfield of ԧ, given that there are transcendental (non-
algebraic) numbers such as ʌ and e. But note that ८ is not an algebraic
field of numbers, since it is not a finite degree extension of Է (to see
this, just think about the degrees of the solutions of‫ ݔ‬௡ െ ʹ ൌ Ͳ for
every n).
An algebraic integer is a complex number Į that satisfies a
polynomial equation ‫ ݔ‬௡ ൅ ߙ௡ିଵ ‫ ݔ‬௡ିଵ ൅ ǥ ൅ ߙ଴ ൌ Ͳ, with rational
coefficients not all equal to 0. Thus, the definition of algebraic integer
results from the definition of algebraic number by restricting the
polynomials to monic polynomials, that is, to those with leading
coefficient 1. Some well-known examples of algebraic integers are the
Gaussian integers ܽ ൅ ܾ݅, where ܽǡ ܾ ‫ א‬Ժ, and the cyclotomic integers
ܽ଴ ൅ ܽଵ ߞ௡ଵ ൅ ‫ ڮ‬൅ ܽ௡ିଵ ߞ௡௡ିଵ , where ܽ௜ ‫ א‬Ժ and ߞ௡ is a primitive ݊
root of unity.

theory. Kronecker used for his theory of divisibility the adjunction of

variables, a method that almost disappeared in the 20th century despite the
efforts of some prominent followers such as Weyl. In fact, Kronecker’s
goal was much more ambitious than that of Dedekind, since he wanted to
develop a theory that would include both algebraic number theory and
algebraic geometry. But the articles of Kronecker were very difficult to
understand and perhaps for that reason his work did not have such an
immediate influence as that of Dedekind in the development of algebraic
number theory.
The main contributions of Dedekind and Kronecker to the subject took
place during the 1860s and 1870s. In the following two decades, young
and talented mathematicians such as Kurt Hensel (1861-1941),
Kronecker’s disciple and editor of his five-volume collected works, Adolf
Hurwitz and, needless to say, also David Hilbert were interested in this
subject. Another important agent in the development of algebraic number
theory was Heinrich Weber, who made important contributions to class
field theory.
Hilbert’s report, entitled Die Theorie der algebraischen Zahlkörper
(Theory of algebraic fields of numbers), later known as Zahlbericht, was
finally published in 1897. It was not only a comprehensive study of the
state of development achieved by number theory at that time, but also (and
mainly) a systematization of it based on Hilbert’s own vision of the
development of this discipline over the last hundred years. In this sense
one of Hilbert’s principal contributions was that “he rewrote the subject so
that knowledge of its history and familiarity with the older texts was no
longer required. New readers could start here.”13
As Hilbert explained in the preface of the Zahlbericht, Gauss, Dirichlet
and Jacobi had expressed their surprise when seeing the close connection
between the issues of number theory and algebraic problems (that is, the
resolution of polynomial equations). The reason for this connection,
Hilbert said, was now clear and diaphanous: both subdisciplines have their
common roots in algebraic number theory. This theory had thus become,
according to Hilbert, the essential component of modern number theory.
Indeed, Hilbert’s Zahlbericht contributed decisively to the
establishment of algebraic number theory as one of the most important
branches of pure mathematics and it became the reference book used by
most mathematicians of the following generation of number theorists such
as Erich Hecke or Helmut Hasse (1898-1979), leaving its footprint on the
textbooks on algebraic number theory that have been published since then

13
Gray 2000, 45.

50 Chapter Four
to the present day. Moreover, in reformulating the results of its

predecessors in Hilbert’s own terms, the Zahlbericht contained a handful
of original results that opened new ways of research in algebraic number
theory.
The Zahlbericht is structured in a Preface and five parts.14 Part 1
introduces the theory of general number fields, i.e., the basic arithmetic
theory of a general finite extension of the field of rational numbers:
integers, ideals, discriminant, units, ideals classes, zeta-function, the ring
of integers, etc. Part 2 deals with the Galois number field, that is, with the
decomposition of primes in a Galois extension: decomposition group and
inertia group, and the corresponding subfields. Part 3 deals with quadratic
number fields. The greatest novelty here is the introduction of the local
norm residue symbol, the so-called “Hilbert symbol” in terms of which he
presents Gauss’s genus theory and also expresses the law of quadratic
reciprocity (§69, Hilfsatz 14). Part 4 deals with cyclotomic fields and
among his jewels there is the first complete proof of the Kronecker-Weber
Theorem (§100, Satz 131) asserting that every abelian extension of the
rational numbers is contained in a suitable cyclotomic field.
The long and last fifth part deals with the arithmetic theory of
೙
Kummer’s fields, i.e., fields of the form ‫ܭ‬൫ ξߙ൯ , where ሺʹߨ݅Τ݊ሻ ‫ܭ א‬.
According to Hilbert, these are the fields “which Kummer took as a basis
for his researches into higher reciprocity laws,” representing the theory of
Kummer’s fields “the highest peak reached on the mountain of today’s
knowledge of arithmetic.”15 In Hilbert’s own words, his main target in this
part was to expose Kummer’s theory avoiding “Kummer’s elaborate
computational machinery, so that here too Riemann’s principle may be
realized and the proofs completed not by calculations but purely by
ideas.”16 However, it should be noted that the critical evaluation of the
scope of Hilbert achievements has been somewhat mixed. Thus, although
some number theorists like Hasse or Emil Artin (1898-1962) have praised
Hilbert’s exposition for his great simplification of Kummer’s theory,
Hilbert’s approach has also been criticized by other mathematicians like
André Weil (1906-1998), who has written that Hilbert’s exposition “is

14
A detailed exposition of the topics dealt with by Hilbert in each part, and
particularly of his most relevant theorems, can be found in (Schappacher 2005).
15
Hilbert 1998, X. The reason for this, as noted by Hilbert is that “almost all
essential ideas and concepts of field theory, at least in a special setting, find an
application in the proof of the higher reciprocity laws.” (Ibid.)
16
Ibid.

little more than an account of Kummer’s number-theoretical work, with

inessential improvements.”17
The advanced character of Hilbert’s report made it inaccessible to most
readers, even of an academic type, so Hilbert gave a course in the winter
semester of 1897/98 on quadratic fields of numbers and motivated one of
the attendees to the course, Julius Sommer (1871-1943), to write a book on
quadratic and cubic fields as an introduction to algebraic number theory.
Similarly, Leigh Wilber Reid (1867-1961), who had done his Ph.D. under
Hilbert’s supervision, published in 1910 a textbook, The Elements of the
Theory of Algebraic Numbers, which dealt exclusively with quadratic
extensions. In the Introduction of the book, written by Hilbert, he
explained that “the theory of numbers is independent of the change of
fashion and in it we do not see, as it is often the case in other departments
of knowledge, one conception or method at one time given undue
prominence, at another suffering undeserved neglect.”18
Despite Hilbert’s words of 1910, he indeed had to choose in the
Zahlbericht between the different “conceptions or methods” that had been
followed in number theory in recent years. Similar to what had happened
with his attack to the problems of invariant theory, the way in which
Hilbert addressed the problems of algebraic number theory in the
Zahlbericht was closer to the conceptual approach followed by Dedekind
than to the more computational one followed by Kronecker or Kummer.
However, there is sometimes a mix of both approaches. So, for example,
Hilbert defines ideals à la Dedekind as set of algebraic integers that are
closed under linear combinations with algebraic integer coefficients. But
he uses Kronecker’s theory of forms to prove the decomposition of ideals
into prime ideals in the ring of integers of an arbitrary number field. These
non-Dedekindian features of Hilbert text were probably the cause of later
criticism by Noether and even Artin of Hilbert’s report, as documented by
various historians.19
It must also be noted that Hilbert made less use than expected for a
mathematician working at the end of 19th century of the unifying concepts
of abstract algebra, for example, the concept of a group. In this sense, it is
also worth mentioning that some key concepts in his work, such as the
concepts of field, ring or ideal, referred to particular sets of numbers,
rather than to general algebraic structures. Finally, we must not forget that
the most original publications of Hilbert, in which he introduced for the
first time the important notion of a field of classes of an algebraic number

17
Kummer 1975, 1.
18
Reid 1910, xvii.
19
See, for example, (Schappacher 2005, 703-4).

52 Chapter Four
field and he envisaged the idea of a general class field theory, only
appeared between 1899 and 1902 and, therefore, after the publication of
the Zahlbericht (see Chapter 6).
Regardless of the criticism of Noether, Artin, Weil and others, it is
clear that no other work has contributed so much to the consolidation of
algebraic number theory as a well-established discipline within
mathematics on which most of the 20th century’s research has been
developed as Hilbert’s Zahlbericht. As Hermann Weyl observed, “while
his work on invariants was an end, his work on algebraic numbers was a
beginning. Most of the work of number theory specialists such as
Furtwängler, Takagi, Hasse, Artin or Chevalley has been focused on
proving the anticipated results of Hilbert.”20

20
Weyl 1944, 627.

CHAPTER FIVE
KLEIN AND THE MATHEMATICAL

TRADITION OF GÖTTINGEN
Although from 1800 to 1830 approximately, France had held the European
leadership in mathematical research, during the second half of the
nineteenth century Germany took over from France. Under the influence
of Dirichlet௅who had travelled to Paris in the decade of the twenties to
study mathematics and went into close contact with Joseph Fourier (1768-
1830) and Siméon Poisson (1781-1840) among others௅the University of
Berlin became, from the thirties, the most important and influential
mathematical centre of Germany. This influence became even more
evident in the second half of the nineteenth century when, thanks to the
teaching and research work of Weierstrass, Kummer and Kronecker, the
University of Berlin became the most important mathematical research
centre in the world. However, in the last quarter of the century, the
University of Göttingen first challenged and then took over the supremacy
of the University of Berlin regarding mathematical education and research.
The great mathematical tradition of Göttingen had begun with Gauss௅
named Mathematicorum princeps௅, who was professionally linked to the
University of Göttingen for more than 50 years. This tradition was
continued by his immediate successors in the chair of mathematics at the
University of Göttingen, Dirichlet, Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866) and
Clebsch. However, Gauss never showed any special interest in the
formation of future mathematicians, while Dirichlet, Riemann and Clebsch
had very short careers in Göttingen, so they could influence only a few
students. The result was that few young mathematicians chose Göttingen
to begin their academic career; they were more inclined for Berlin or
Königsberg. The true protagonist in the conversion of Göttingen in the
first mathematical centre of Germany and in the establishment there of a
community of world first class mathematicians was Felix Klein.
Klein was born on April 25, 1849 in Düsseldorf, administrative capital
of Prussian Rhineland and the main industrial centre of Prussia. After an
elementary instruction in his home taught by his mother, when he was six
54 Chapter Five
years old he entered a private school in Düsseldorf and two and a half
years later, in 1857, he continued his studies at the gymnasium in the same
city. A traditional education, based predominantly on the cultivation of
classical languages, has often been attributed to the German Gymnasien,
but this ceased to be the case in most of the Prussian ones after the reforms
undertaken in the 1820s and 1830s. Certainly, mathematics was well
represented at the Düsseldorf gymnasium which Klein attended and it was
taught by competent teachers. From the results achieved in the Abitur, we
also know that Klein received good instruction in mathematics, science
and humanities.
After graduating, Klein entered the University of Bonn at the age of 16
and a half, where he studied not only mathematics but also natural
sciences from 1865 to 1866. This was possible thanks to the existence at
the Bonn University of the Seminar für die Gesamten Naturwissenschaften
(Seminar on the entire Nature Sciences), which offered within its five
sections devoted to physics, chemistry, geology, botany and zoology, a
coherent and systematic program for the practical and theoretical study of
the sciences. While studying at the University of Bonn, Klein was
appointed as a laboratory assistant to Julius Plücker (1801-1868), a
position he held from 1866 to 1868. Plücker held a chair of mathematics
and experimental physics in Bonn, but when Klein became his assistant,
Plücker’s interests had already been directed towards geometry. From the
winter semester of the 1867/68 academic year, Klein concentrated on
mathematics and gradually became influenced by Plücker and his
analytical approach to geometry. Klein received his doctorate in 1868,
after defending a thesis, supervised by Plücker, on linear geometry and its
application to mechanics.
That same year, Plücker died, leaving incomplete the second part of his
work Neue Geometrie des Raumes (New Geometry of Space), in which he
laid the foundations of the analytical approach to linear geometry. Given
the circumstances, Klein was the most suitable person to complete the
work of Plücker and so the editing of its work was entrusted to him.
Klein’s editorial involvement in Plücker’s work put him in contact with
Clebsch, who then occupied the chair of mathematics at the University of
Göttingen and had formed around him an important group of researchers
in algebraic geometry and the theory of invariants.
Klein moved to Göttingen and studied there from January to August
1869 with Clebsch. He then continued his studies at the University of
Berlin, where he stayed until April 1870 and attended the highly
specialized Mathematisches Seminar (Seminar on Mathematics). We also
know that he attended a conference done by Kronecker but did not want to
Klein and the Mathematical Tradition of Göttingen 55
attend a conference by Weierstrass, whose dominant position was not of

his liking. In Berlin, Klein met Sophus Lie (1842-1899), whose
cooperation with him would be very important in the following years. In
April 1870, the two young mathematicians settled in Paris to learn first-
hand the new advances in mathematics achieved by the French, but the
outbreak of the Franco-German war in July 1870 put an end to his research
stay in the French capital. Klein, who was very patriotic, volunteered for
the army, where he served in the medical community. Infected by typhoid
fever, he had to leave the army and took advantage of the recovery time to
prepare his habilitation thesis. He submitted the habilitation thesis in
January 1871 and during the following months he lectured as a
Privatdozent at the University of Göttingen, where he frequented the
Clebsch circle.
It was precisely that year when Klein published the first of two
writings entitled Über die sogennante nicht-euklidische Geometrie (About
the so-called non-Euclidean Geometry), in which he showed that
Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries (hyperbolic and elliptical) could
be considered special cases of a projective surface to which a specific
conic section was attached. By furnishing the same projective model of
Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries, Klein also demonstrated that
Euclidean geometry and non-Euclidean geometry were equiconsistent and,
therefore, that they stood in an equal footing, ending all controversy about
the consistency of non-Euclidean geometry. Despite some initial criticisms
(Cayley, for example, never accepted Klein’s proof, considering it
circular), Klein’s result on the status of non-Euclidean geometry was soon
widely recognized as a first-order contribution to mathematics. This,
together with Klein’s earlier contributions to linear geometry, gained him
a great reputation. Clebsch had great regard for Klein’s talent and at his
instance, he was made an ordentlicher Professor at the University of
Erlangen.
It was common at that time that new professors wrote a kind of
program that served as a letter of introduction for their entrance to the
university. Klein’s famous Anstrittrede (Inaugural Speech) was titled
“Vergleichende Betrachtungen über neuere geometrische Forschungen”
(“A Comparative Review of Recent Researches in Geometry”), which had
a great international impact and was later known as the Erlanger
Programm. Klein wrote this work as a response to a purely theoretical
problem, but it was also a consequence of Klein’s dissatisfaction with the
fragmentation and discredit, caused basically by the opposition between
analytical and synthetic geometers, which characterized the geometry of
that time in Germany.
56 Chapter Five
In the first section of the Erlanger Programm, Klein explained his

research program in the following terms: “Given a manifold
(Mannigfaltigkeit) and a group of transformations acting on it, investigate
the properties of the figures (Gebilde) of that manifold that are invariant
under all the transformations of that group.”1 This was for Klein, the
proper object of study of every geometry. In other words, given a manifold
and a group of transformations, a geometry is the invariant theory of the
given transformation group.
The above definition of geometry stresses the importance for geometry
of two algebraic concepts, the concept of invariance and the concept of
group. We have already studied the importance of the theory of invariants
in the second half of the 19th century (see Chapter 2). Klein learned about
this concept from his mentor Clebsch, who was together with Gordan, the
most prominent figures in the study of algebraic invariants in Germany.
Clebsch and Gordan had applied the concept of invariance to algebra and
only to the linear group. Now Klein applied it to geometry and to the space
transformation groups.
However, the most significant contribution of Klein’s Erlanger
Programm was the fundamental role he deserved to the concept of group
in geometry. He was familiar with this concept because of his relationship
with Sophus Lie and through the work of Camille Jordan (1838-1922).
Klein did not discover the concept of group nor did he have the abstract
concept of group (he only considered groups of transformations), but he
was the first to realize its usefulness for the classification of different
geometries: each geometry is the study of certain properties that do not
change (the invariants) when certain geometric transformations are
applied, which must have a group structure under the composition
operation.2 The above definition served to define and classify all the
existing geometries known at that time. Thus, for example, Euclidean
geometry is the study of invariants through the isometry group, affine
geometry is the study of invariants by the affine group, projective
geometry is the study of invariants through the projective group, etc.

1
Klein 1872, 7.
2
Another mathematician who stressed and worked out the connections between
groups of transformations and geometry was Poincaré. But his main contributions
were in the decade of the eighties.
Klein’s Erlanger Programm
Euclidean plane geometry is the study of invariants under the set ‫ ܩ‬of
all rigid movements: translations, rotations and reflections. Since the
composition of any two such transformations and the inverse of any
such transformation are also such transformations and the identity is
also one such transformation, it follows that ‫ ܩ‬is a group, called the
isometry group. The corresponding geometry is plane Euclidean
geometry. Since geometric properties such as length, area, congruence
and similarity of figures, perpendicularity, parallelism, collinearity of
points and concurrence of lines are invariant under the group ‫ܩ‬, these
properties are studied in plane Euclidean geometry.
If the group ‫ ܩ‬is enlarged by including, together with translations,
rotations and reflections, dilations and shears, all transformations
composite from all above-mentioned transformations, we obtain the
affine group. Under this enlarged group, properties such as length,
area, perpendicularity and congruence of figures are no longer
invariant and hence are no longer subjects of the study in the
framework of plane affine geometry. However, parallelism,
collinearity of points and concurrence of lines are still invariant and,
consequently, constitute subject matter for the study of this geometry.
Similarly, plane projective geometry is the study of those geometric
properties which remain invariant under the group of the so-called
projective transformations. Of the previously mentioned properties,
only collinearity of points and concurrence of lines remain invariant.
Another important invariant under this group of geometric
transformations is the cross ratio of four collinear points.
The groups of transformations stated above can be ordered by the
inclusion relation in this way:
‫ ؿ ؿ‬
Now, since every transformation group defines a corresponding

geometry, we conclude that
‫ ؿ ؿ‬
This gives sense to the privileged position that occupies Projective

Geometry in Klein’s classification of geometry.
58 Chapter Five
Clebsch died of diphtheria in 1872 and that caused some young

mathematicians to leave Göttingen for Erlangen, but the truth is that Klein
never had more than seven students in any of his classes and could never
form a circle of competent mathematicians around him. Due to his
isolation, Klein did not hesitate to accept an offer of the Technische
Hochschule (Higher Technical School) in Munich in 1875. Klein stayed in
this faculty for five years and, in addition to having a large group of
students in his classes, mathematical talents such as Adolf Hurwitz, Carl
Runge (1856-1927), or Max Planck (1858-1947) attended his seminar and
advanced classes.
In 1880 Klein accepted a newly created chair of geometry in Leipzig.
During his stay at this university, Klein renovated the university
auditorium, set up a mathematical seminar, a mathematics library and a
collection of mathematical models. In addition, in 1882 he instituted the
first paid position of assistant in mathematics in all of Germany. Finally,
as a professor, he directed more than half of the 36 doctoral theses that
were presented during his stay in Leipzig and five habilitation theses
(Habilitationschriften), which shows the impulse that Klein gave to
Leipzig University with the objective of consolidating it as one of the most
important research centres in Germany.
In 1881, a young and brilliant French mathematician named Henri
Poincaré began publishing a series of articles on the theory of so-called
automorphic functions. Klein was interested immediately by the subject
and initiated a scientific correspondence, not exempted of some rivalry,
with Poincaré. One of Klein’s objectives was to prove a theorem for the
uniformization of the automorphic functions that could serve as the basis
for this theory. Finally, after a great intellectual effort, Klein managed to
formulate this theorem and outlined the proof of it. But the effort left a
mark on him and caused recurring periods of depression over the years
1883 and 1884, which led him to abandon the first line of mathematical
research that was being done at that time.
From the publication of his famous work Vorlesüngen über das
Ikosaeder und die Auflösung der Gleichungen vom fünfte Grade (Lectures
on the icosahedron and the solution of equations of fifth degree) in 1884,
Klein also adopted a new role as a professor, devoting himself to sketching
the broad lines of a theory and offering suggestions for its development,
leaving his assistants and disciples the task of completing the work. Robert
Fricke (1861-1930), who arrived in Leipzig in 1884, began his career as an
assistant to Klein, but would soon become his most important contributor
in the elaboration of the four volumes on automorphic and elliptical
modular functions that both would write during the two following decades.
Fig. 5-1 Felix Klein as a professor at Leipzig
But Klein’s greatest success in his new role as professor would coincide
with his first years in Göttingen. In 1886 Klein accepted a chair at this
university, where he had studied with Clebsch and where he had been
60 Chapter Five
qualified as a university professor. The representative of the Prussian

culture ministry, Friedrich Althoff, travelled expressly to Leipzig to ask
Klein to accept the offer. The good relations with Althoff, which would
remain until his death in 1908, were essential for the realization of the
plans that Klein had for the University of Göttingen. It was not until 1892
that Klein’s idea of turning Göttingen into a centre of excellence in exact
sciences began to take shape.
Apart from being a magnificent professor and lecturer, Klein brilliantly
used an important innovation of German universities in the second half of
the 19th century, the Seminar, in order to train new mathematical talents.
In the Seminar, the most recent results of mathematical research were
presented to students, who could discuss and present themselves these
results or their own research works in turns. This made many students
from all over the world, particularly the United States, go to German
universities, attracted not only by the great minds that taught there, but
also by a system that allowed them to know first-hand and openly discuss
the most recent results.
During his first ten years in Göttingen, Klein taught numerous courses,
which were often published and circulated widely inside and outside of
Göttingen. Klein’s courses focused on a wide variety of topics, such as
mechanics, potential theory, and other topics amid mathematics and
physics. Klein’s goal, in offering courses on these subjects, was to reclaim
the spirit of the Göttingen tradition forged by mathematicians such as
Gauss and Riemann, as well as breaking with his typecasting as a
geometer. In 1893, Klein visited the North-Western University in
Evanston, Illinois, where he lectured on the current state of mathematics
for two weeks. In the last lecture, after explaining in the previous lectures
the latest advances in mathematics obtained in Germany, Klein
recommended to future American students who would like to go to
Göttingen, to not exclusively attend their lectures due to “their
encyclopaedic character” and that those who would like to do the
doctorate, to come in contact with other professors to continue their
specialization.
As a Wissenschaftpolitiker, that is, as a political activist in defence of
the sciences, Klein skillfully dealt with Althoff, the ministerial
representative, to get the best teachers and researchers for the mathematics
division at Göttingen. In this sense, Klein’s greatest goal was to bring
Hilbert to Göttingen, although his work was not limited to that. In 1892
Klein founded, together with his colleague Heinrich Weber, the Göttingen
Mathematischen Geselschaft (Mathematical Society of Göttingen), which
would have a major importance in the development of mathematics in
Göttingen. Originally, the members of the society met once a week to

discuss recent research and news about the profession, but as the society
grew, the opportunity was often used to invite visiting professors and
mathematicians or physicists of recognized international prestige to
explain their most recent discoveries.
In addition, Klein revitalized the mathematics and physics seminar,
gave a significant impulse to the mathematics library of the University of
Göttingen, renewed the math curriculum, directed the task of archiving the
posthumous writings of Gauss, offered summer courses for high school
teachers, and supported and participated in the DMV activities. For several
years, Klein also directed the journal Mathematische Annalen, founded in
1868 by Clebsch and Carl Neumann (1832-1925), which ended up
equalling or overcoming in prestige the Journal fur die Reine und
Angewandte Mathematiker௅better known as Crelle’s Journal, in honour of
its founder August Leopold Crelle (1780-1855), who was also the editor
until his death in 1855௅published by the University of Berlin.
In 1896, Klein finally succeeded in offering the other chair of
mathematics of the University of Göttingen to Hilbert and convincing him
to accept the offer. Both Klein and Hilbert would cause Göttingen to
become the world centre of mathematics during practically the first half of
the twentieth century. The collaboration between both mathematicians
would also be a key for the future of Mathematische Annalen, since in
1902 Klein presented Hilbert as editor-in-chief of the journal, a position he
kept until 1930.
In the 90’s, Klein continued his research on function theory, but
became increasingly involved in his activities as Wissenschaftpolitiker.
One of the main objectives in Klein’s reform agenda was to strengthen the
relationship between mathematics and its applications in science and
technology. In this sense, Klein promoted, with the help of the most
powerful German industrialists of the moment, the creation in 1898 of the
Göttinger Vereinigung zur Förderung der angewandten Physik (Göttingen
association for the promotion of applied physics), which expanded in 1901
to also include mathematics. This association, which had such important
firm members as Bayer, Krupp, Siemens & Halske, AEG and
Norddeutschen Lloyd, among others, not only sponsored and co-financed
research activities in Göttingen, but also contributed to the construction of
new buildings, particularly the one of the new Institute of Physics of the
University of Göttingen, inaugurated in 1904. Klein’s dream was to use
the resources of the association to erect a building and a similar institute
for mathematics. But the resistance of the Ministry of Finance first, the
outbreak of World War I and the inflation of the early twenties, postponed
62 Chapter Five
its realization. It was only in 1929, after the death of Klein and thanks to
the Rockefeller Foundation, when the first building of the Mathematical
Institute finally opened.

CHAPTER SIX
HILBERT’S FIRST YEARS AT GÖTTINGEN
Hilbert finished his report on the theory of numbers at the University of

Göttingen, where he had incorporated during the Easter of 1895. As we
already know, the efforts to bring Hilbert to Göttingen had been mainly
taken by Felix Klein, who was not only a great mathematician, but also a
first-class Wissenschaftpolitiker. Hilbert spent the rest of his academic
career in the University of Göttingen, which became, under the leadership
of Klein and Hilbert, the world’s most important mathematical research
centre and a paradigm of modern universities.
After a first failed attempt in 1892 led Heinrich Weber to Göttingen
instead of Hilbert, Klein took advantage three years later of the fact that
Weber had accepted a chair in Strasbourg to request the addition of Hilbert
to the teaching staff of Göttingen. A letter from Klein to Hilbert shows
Klein’s determination in his intentions and his conviction that Hilbert was
the most appropriate person to carry them out, as well as his admiration for
his mathematical talent:
This evening the faculty will meet, and although I cannot know in advance
what the commission will recommend, I want to inform you that I will
make every effort to ensure that no one else but you is called here. You are
the man I need as my scientific complement: due to the direction of your
work, the strength of your mathematical talent and the fact that you are
now in the middle of your productive career. I count on you to give a new
impulse to the mathematical school here, which has grown and, apparently,
will continue to grow much more [...] I cannot know if I will prevail in the
faculty, and even less if the recommendation that I will make will
ultimately be heard in Berlin. But one thing you should promise me today:
that you will not decline the offer if it comes to you! 1
Hilbert finally arrived in 1895 and with his arrival Göttingen gradually
became the centre of reference for mathematical research in Germany and
throughout the world. In the mid-90s, matriculation in mathematics

1
Frei 1985, 115.

64 Chapter Six
courses in German universities was constantly increasing. In Göttingen,

the number of mathematics and science students had dropped from a
maximum of 240 during the year 1882 to only 90 ten years later, but in
1900 it had risen again to 300, and since then it continued to grow,
reaching almost 800 students enrolled in 1914. In addition, according to
Klein’s own estimates, between 10 and 15 percent of students were at an
advanced level and could benefit fully from the resources that offered the
University of Göttingen.
Fig. 6-1 The University of Göttingen at the beginning of the 20th century
Among the facilities offered by the University two of them stood out,
which had been promoted by Klein with the aim of making the University
of Göttingen “more invincible than ever.” The first was a collection of
mathematical models, which aimed at the use of physical models and
experimental instruments in education and research. The second was the
library of mathematics, popularly known as das Lesezimmer (the reading
room), a library in which the books were placed on open shelves so that
the students could freely consult them. As noted by van der Waerden,
“today, every mathematics department has a library, in which every
student can take the books and journals directly from the shelves, but in
1924, when I came to Gottingen as a student, this was an exception.”2
One of the advantages of the Lesezimmer, as van der Waerden

2
Van der Waerden 1983, 1-2.

Hilbert’s First Years at Göttingen 65
remembered, was that sometimes you were going to look for a specific
book and ended up consulting another one that was better. “In this way, I
learned more in weeks or months in the Lesezimmer than many students
learn in years and years.”3
Regarding the academic staff, the key date that precipitated events in
the meteoric rise of Göttingen as a centre of mathematical excellence was
1902. That year, Hilbert was named successor of Lazarus Fuchs at the
University of Berlin but declined the offer after Althoff had agreed to
create an Ordinariat in Göttingen for Minkowski. To the arrival of
Minkowski in 1902, was added two years later that of Carl Runge (1856-
1927), who would occupy a newly created chair of applied mathematics.
Other prominent figures who joined the University of Göttingen in those
years were the astronomer Karl Schwarzschild (1873-1916), Ludwig
Prandtl (1875-1953), a precursor of aerodynamic and hydrodynamic
research, and the geophysicist Emil Wiechert (1861-1928).
Even before Klein officially retired in 1912, Hilbert began to preside
the weekly meetings of the Mathematical Society of Göttingen. After these
meetings, many of the participants would meet at the Rohn’s Cafe, located
in the Hainberg on the outskirts of the city, for a follow up session
(Nachsitzung). There the young mathematicians could expose their ideas
in a much more relaxed and kind environment than the meetings of the
Mathematical Society, in which the Prussian sense of order used to
prevail. Norbert Wiener (1894-1964), the famous American
mathematician and father of cybernetics, who arrived in Göttingen in 1914
to study with Hilbert and Landau, would say a few years later that “the
combination of science and social life in the Nachsitzungen at Rohn’s café
up the hill was particularly attractive to me. The meetings had a certain
resemblance to those of the Harvard Mathematical Society, but the older
mathematicians were greater, the younger men were abler and more
enthusiastic, and the contacts were freer. The Harvard Mathematical
Society meetings were to the Göttingen meetings as near beer is to a deep
draft of Münchener.”4
Another type of meeting took place on Thursday afternoons, the so-
called Bonzenspaziergang (the walk of the mandarins) another tradition
instituted by Klein. This walk, also going up the mountain until reaching
Rohn’s café, gave Göttingen professors an opportunity to discuss
academic affairs distantly. In these walks, in which the mandarin
mathematicians (Klein, Hilbert, Minkowski and Runge) were always

3
As reported by Reid (1970, 162).
4
Wiener 1953, p. 211.

66 Chapter Six
involved, they discussed “current events in science and in the life of the
University”5 (for example, the positions that were later taken in the formal
meetings of the Faculty of Philosophy of Göttingen).
Despite the diversity of courses taught by Klein during the first years
in Göttingen, his plan to gradually abandon the first line of mathematical
research and the new role he carried out as a professor would have been
disastrous for mathematics at Göttingen if Hilbert had not occupied his
place in both tasks: research and academic. But Hilbert responded fully to
the demands of the moment and quickly became the reference as a
professor and researcher in Germany and the entire world in the field of
mathematics. Some examples of this are not only his contributions to
number theory and geometry through masterpieces of modern mathematics
such as the Zahlbericht and Grundlagen der Geometrie respectively, or his
ability to glimpse the future of mathematics in his famous list of
Mathematical Problems presented in Paris in 1900, but also the more than
sixty doctoral theses directed by him in Göttingen between 1895 and 1914
and his leadership in the task of converting Göttingen in the Mecca of
modern mathematics at the turn of the last century.
In his excellent Lebensgeschichte, Otto Blumenthal, Hilbert’s first
doctoral student in Göttingen, has left us a magnificent portrait of Hilbert’s
first years as a teacher in this university. Blumenthal explains that
Hilbert’s lecture courses were characterized by their austerity and lack of
ornaments, by their sometimes-vacillating tone and a certain tendency to
repeat the most important theorems for everyone to understand it, but that
the diaphanous clarity and the wealth of the content in his lectures made
them forget any defect in their form. In his lectures he always incorporated
both new and his own results, but without emphasizing them expressly.
Hilbert, says Blumenthal, always “tried to be clear, understandable to
everyone. He lectured for students, not for himself.”6
During the eight and a half years he had been in Königsberg, Hilbert
had never taught two courses on the same subject, except for a weekly
one-hour course on determinants. This allowed him to adjust easily to
Klein’s wishes and to teach courses on the most diverse subjects in
Göttingen. The first semester he gave a course on determinants and
elliptical functions and led, along with Klein, a seminar on real functions
every Wednesday morning. In the seminars, Hilbert was always very
attentive, he was generally friendly and appreciated the work of others, but
he could also lose patience and cut off a student who made an inadequate

5
Born 1978, 98.
6
Hilbert 1965, vol. 3, 400.

presentation (“This is chalk, chalk, nothing more than chalk!”, he used to

exclaim with his strong Königsberg’s accent) or criticize it sharply if he
considered it necessary (“But that’s completely trivial!”).
After each seminar, Hilbert used to meet with the participants and walk
to a rural establishment (Waldwirtschaft) on the hills overlooking
Göttingen, where he talked about mathematics. With the most prominent
participants in the seminar, his doctorates, with whom he had a more
intimate contact, he used to take a longer weekly walk through the
mountains around Göttingen. In these walks doctoral students could take
the opportunity to ask questions about their research, but it was mainly
Hilbert who spoke to them of algebraic number theory, which was the
research topic that occupied him until 1899.
At the beginning of 1896, Hilbert’s part of the Zahlbericht was
practically finished, but Minkowski’s was not. In the month of February,
Hilbert proposed that either the Minkowski’s part be published as it was
with his part, or that it be published separately the following year.
Minkowski accepted the second proposal with gratitude. Just a little later,
Hilbert had already finished his report on algebraic number fields and sent
it to press. As the galleys arrived they were sent to Minkowski for
correction. In the autumn of 1896, Minkowski accepted, a bit displeased, a
place in Zürich, where he met Hurwitz again, so that the two old friends
corrected the galleys of Hilbert’s report that were still to be reviewed.
In the month of April 1897, Hilbert finally sent the Zahlbericht to be
printed. This allowed him to take care of some more specific
investigations that he had had to leave aside during the writing of the
report on number theory. More concretely, Hilbert concentrated on trying
to generalize the law of reciprocity to the algebraic fields of numbers
(quadratic, cyclotomic and Kummer’s fields) that he had investigated in
the Zahlbericht. This allowed him to enunciate the law of quadratic
reciprocity in a simple and elegant way that also made it applicable to
these algebraic number fields. This result was the main target of the
articles “Über die Theorie des relativquadratischen Zahlkörper” (1899)
and “Über die Theorie der relative-Abelschen Zahlkörper” (1902),7 which
constitute the culmination of Hilbert’s work in algebraic number theory.
Furthermore, in this last article Hilbert sketched the basic features of what
would later be called class field theory. More concretely, Hilbert
introduced the notion of a non-ramified class field, although his idea of

7
In Hilbert (1965, vol 1, 370-482 and 483-509, respectively). The last article is a
reimpression with minor changes of a paper previously published in Nachrichten
der Königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, mathematisch-
physikalische Klasse (1898).

68 Chapter Six
class field theory was quite a bit more general, not limited to the theory of
non-ramified class fields.
The origins of class field theory can be traced back to the work of
Kronecker. In examining the work of Niels Henrik Abel (1802-1829), he
observed that certain abelian extensions of imaginary quadratic number
fields are generated by the adjunction of special values of automorphic
functions arising from elliptic curves. Furthermore, he also observed that
each abelian extension of Է is a subfield of a field obtained by adjoining
to Է a special value of an automorphic function. This led him to state in
the article “Über die algebraisch auflösbaren Gleichungen” (“On
Algebraically Solvable Equations”) (1853) the following:
(Kronecker-Weber Theorem). Let ‫ ܭ‬be a finite abelian extension of Է.
Then there exists a positive integer ݊ such that ‫ ك ܭ‬Է൫݁ ଶగ௜ Τ௡ ൯.8
(The numbers ݁ ଶగ௜Τ௡ are the roots of unity which together with the rational
numbers constitute the field of cyclotomic numbers. Hence the Kronecker-
Weber theorem can also be stated as saying that every abelian extension of
Է is contained in a cyclotomic extension of Է). Kronecker wondered
whether all abelian extensions of imaginary quadratic fields are obtained
in this way, that is, they are subfields of fields obtained by adjoining to
them special values of automorphic functions. This was Kronecker’s
Jugendtraum (dream of his youth). So Kronecker posed the main question
of class field theory, namely, finding all abelian extensions of given
algebraic number fields.
In the preface of the first paper above mentioned, Hilbert wrote:
The methods which I have used in the following for the investigation of
relative quadratic fields are, by a suitable generalization, also useful with
the same results in the theory of relative abelian fields of arbitrary relative
degree, and then lead specially to the general reciprocity law for arbitrary
higher power residues in an arbitrary algebraic number domain.9

8
Kronecker did not manage to prove the theorem for field extensions of degree a
power of ʹ. In the article “Theorie der Abel’schen Zahlkörper” (“Theory of
Abelian Number Fields”) (1886), Weber supplied a proof that was also incomplete.
The first complete proof of the theorem was published in Hilbert’s paper “Ein
neuer Beweis des Kronecker’schen Fundementalsatzes über Abel’sche
Zahlkörper” (“A New Proof of Kronecker’s Fundamental Theorem for Abelian
Number Fields”) (1896).
9
Hilbert 1965, vol 1, 370.

The subject of the 1899 paper was in effect to generalize the law of
quadratic reciprocity, so that it becomes valid not only for cyclotomic
fields but also for any arbitrary algebraic number field. He conjectured the
following (Satz 60):
Hilbert’s reciprocity law: Let ݇ be an algebraic number field containing
ఓǡఔ
the ݉-th roots of unity; then for all ߤǡ ߥ ‫ ܭ א‬ൈ , we have ς௣ ቀ ቁ ൌ ͳ,
௣
ǤǡǤ
where ቀ ቁ is Hilbert’s ݉-th power norm residue symbol mod ‫݌‬, and the
௣
product is extended over all prime places of ‫ܭ‬.
As we will explain in a moment, Hilbert’s conjectured reciprocity law was

part and parcel of one of the problems listed in his famous address at the
International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in Paris (1900).
Hilbert’s approach in the 1899 article was based on the genus theory in
a relative quadratic number field and so he had to impose on the base field
‫ ܭ‬a couple of restrictions that converted the relative quadratic field over ‫ܭ‬
into a relatively ramified field. However, in the paper of 1902 Hilbert
banished the two conditions imposed on the base field so that the resultant
relative quadratic number field was non-ramified. In this way, Hilbert
obtained for the first time the notion of a non-ramified class field
(nowadays we usually call the maximal unramified abelian extension of ‫ܭ‬
the Hilbert class field of ‫)ܭ‬. The introduction of non-ramified class fields
in the context of relative abelian number fields is usually the point of
departure of class field theory.
After 1899 Hilbert no longer wrote about class field theory, although
nine of the doctoral theses directed by him addressed issues related to this
topic. It must also be noted that two of the problems stated by Hilbert in
his famous address to the ICM in Paris in 1900 were on class field theory,
namely problems 9 and 12. Problem 9 asks for a proof of the most general
law of reciprocity in any number field. A first step in this direction had
been made by Hilbert himself when he conjectured a reciprocity law for
arbitrary algebraic number fields. Philipp Furtwängler (1869-1940), who
proved in 1907 and 1930 most of Hilbert’s conjectures on class field
theory, Teiji Takagi (1875-1960), Hasse and Artin succeeded in finding
reciprocity laws in algebraic number fields of an increasing generality.
Artin’s reciprocity law (1927) is usually considered as the final response
to Hilbert’s quest for the “most general reciprocity law” for abelian
extensions; for non-abelian extensions the problem is still open. Problem
12 asks for a generalization of Kronecker’s Jugendtraum, that is, the
extension of Kronecker-Weber Theorem on abelian fields to any algebraic
realm of rationality. Kronecker’s Jugendtraum was fulfilled later by

70 Chapter Six
Weber in 1908 and Rudolf Fueter (1880-1950) in 1914, who partially

proved Kronecker’s conjecture, and finally by Takagi in 1920, who gave a
complete proof of it within class field theory. Problem 12 is still a major
open problem although Goro Shimura (1930-) has made a good deal of
progress on this problem.

CHAPTER SEVEN
THE FOUNDATIONS OF GEOMETRY
Hilbert’s announcement that he would give the course Elemente der

Euklidischen Geometrie (Elements of Euclidean Geometry) in the winter
semester of 1898/99 was a surprise for his students, even the more
veterans such as Blumenthal who regularly participated in the long walks
with Hilbert, since they “had never noticed that Hilbert was occupied with
geometrical issues; he only spoke about number fields.”1 However,
Hilbert’s interest in geometry was not new, given that he had already
taught several courses in Königsberg on geometry. Moreover, Hilbert had
also given two summer courses (Ferienkurse) in Göttingen aimed at
Oberlehrer (professors in Gymnasien or in similar institutions) during the
school holidays of 1896 and 1898.
The lectures of 1898/99 offered a description of geometry very similar
to that of the lectures on the foundations of geometry of 1894 (see Chapter
3). In both cases, geometry was characterized as “the most complete
natural science” whose objective is “the logical derivation of all facts
belonging to its domain from well-known basic propositions.”2 Both
lecture courses presented the same point of view on how the axiomatic
analysis of geometry proceeds, by providing a scheme or network of
concepts obtained by abstraction from the geometrical facts,
corresponding the axioms to the basic geometrical facts. Finally, in both
courses the demand for completeness was understood as the claim that
there can be no geometrical facts that have no corresponding theorem in
the axiomatic system, that is, as a form of deductive completeness of the
axiom system relative to the geometrical facts.3
The 1898/99 lecture notes presented, however, an important novelty
with respect to those of 1894. This was the formalistic standpoint about

1
Hilbert 1965, vol. 3, 402.
2
Hilbert 2004, 302.
3
This must be taken with some caution, since no logical system is specified or
presupposed. So “deductive completeness” cannot be understood exactly in the
same sense that we usually found in logical textbooks.
72 Chapter Seven
the geometrical concepts or terms that Hilbert had learned at Wiener’s

conference in 1891 and here was clearly stated for the first time. Thus,
Hilbert now writes, to set up Euclidean geometry, we must think about
three systems of things, points, lines and planes. However:
Despite the chosen names, we should not allow ourselves to be tempted to
attribute to these things certain geometrical properties, which we usually
associate with these names. So far, we only know that each thing in a
system is different from each thing of the other two systems. All other
properties of these things will be given only through the axioms.4
This would also be the point of view of what is perhaps the best-known
work of Hilbert and one of the most celebrated works in the history of
mathematics: Grundlagen der Geometrie (The Foundations of Geometry).
It is popularly known with the nickname of Festschrift, since it was part of
a volume edited by the University of Göttingen to celebrate the
inauguration of a monument dedicated to two of its most illustrious
professors: Gauss and Weber. The volume in question consisted of two
works, Hilbert’s work and a work by Emil Wiechert entitled Grundlagen
der Elektrodynamik (Foundations of Electrodynamics), but nowadays
nobody remembers this second work and the name of Festschrift has
remained inextricably linked to Hilbert’s work. It is a well-known fact that
Hilbert’s contribution to the Festschrift was composed quickly just after
the lecture course of 1898/99 ended and that it was Klein who suggested to
Hilbert that he present the material of these lectures to celebrate the
inauguration of the Gauss-Weber monument, which was finally carried out
on June 17, 1899.5
As is well known, Euclid had systematized elementary plane and solid
geometry in his Elements, taking as reference Aristotle’s theory of science.
Thus, we can find in the first book of the Elements a list of propositions,
stated without proof, classified into three groups: definitions (ex: “A point
is that of which there is no part”), common notions (ex: “The whole is
greater than the part”) and postulates (ex: the parallel axiom, also called
Euclid’s Postulate). From these propositions are proved, by means of
logic, the most important theorems of plane geometry (Euclid’s preferred
method of proof is the indirect proof or reductio ad absurdum).
Nonetheless, since the seventeenth century the mathematical
community had been aware that several proofs in the Elements used

4
Ibid., 304.
5
The following paragraphs are taken almost verbatim from Roselló (2012, 109-
10).
The Foundations of Geometry 73
assumptions or hypotheses which were not spelled out in its postulates,

common notions and definitions. Hence a thorough reworking of
Euclidean geometry was required in a way that would avoid these “gaps”
in the deductive structure of the Elements. Moreover, the development
during the XIX century of hyperbolic geometry by Nikolai Lobachevski
(1792-1856) and János Bolyai (1802-1860) and elliptic geometry by
Riemann (these are the so-called non-Euclidean geometries), and also of
projective geometry by Jean-Victor Poncelet and non-Archimedean
geometry by Giuseppe Veronese (1854-1917), raised the need for a
deductive organization of all geometrical knowledge that made visible the
logical connections between the new geometries and Euclidean geometry.
For example, in hyperbolic geometry, straight lines can be extended
indefinitely and there are infinite lines parallel to a given line passing
through a point outside it, whereas in elliptic geometry, straight lines are
finite and there are no parallel lines. Thus, in hyperbolic and elliptic
geometry the first four postulates of Euclid are valid, but the fifth (the
axiom of parallels) is not. Therefore, if we denote by Ȉ the set of the first
four axioms of Euclid and by Į the axiom of parallels, then it follows that
in Euclidean geometry 6 D is valid, whereas in non-Euclidean geometry
6 D is valid. Similarly, if we denote by E the axiom of Archimedes
(an axiom of continuity, not explicitly stated by Euclid, but necessary for
the deductions carried out in the Elements) and by Ȉ the other axioms of
Euclidean geometry, then in Euclidean geometry 6 E is valid, while in
non-Archimedean geometry 6 E is valid. However, since all these
geometries arise in denying a postulate of Euclidean geometry, whose
axioms express supposedly evident and necessary truths about space that
are the foundation of modern physics and astronomy, we cannot exclude
the possibility that all these geometries are inconsistent, i.e., contradictory.
And in the case they were all consistent, which of them was true?
Hilbert responded to all these questions in Grundlagen der Geometrie
by applying the axiomatic method and a new conception of it he called
formal axiomatics.
The first objective of this method was to look for a system of axioms
through which it would be possible to characterize the basic facts
(Grundtatsachen) of Euclidean geometry and to prove its deductive
completeness with respect to all the other geometric facts (Thatsachen),
that is, a system of axioms for Euclidean geometry had to be found that
would be complete in the sense it constituted a sufficient basis for a
rigorous derivation of all the true statements in this domain of
mathematics.
74 Chapter Seven
The parallel axiom and non-Euclidean geometries
Euclid defined the notion of parallelism in Elements as follows:
Parallel straight lines are straight lines which, being in the

same plane and being produced indefinitely in both directions,
do not meet one another in either direction.
The fifth postulate, the famous parallel axiom or Euclid´s postulate is

enunciated in the following terms:
That, if a straight line falling on two straight lines makes the

interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the
two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on
which are the angles less than the two right angles.
To see the intuitive connection between the definition of parallelism

and the parallel axiom it is sufficient to observe the following drawing:
In this figure, the angles ‫ ܥܣܤס‬i ‫ ܦܥܣס‬together are smaller than two
straight angles and, in agreement to Euclid´s postulate the lines AB and
CD will meet each other when being indefinitely extended, whereas if
the lines AE and CD are parallel, then Euclid´s postulate guarantees
that the angles ‫ ܥܣܧס‬i ‫ ܦܥܣס‬together are equal to two straight angles.
Euclid’s fifth postulate often appears in modern mathematical texts
in the following terms:
In a plane, given a straight line and a point not on it, at most

one line parallel to the given line can be drawn through the
point.
cont. p. 75
This statement is known as Playfair’s axiom, in honour of the Scottish

mathematician John Playfair (1748-1819). In the presence of the
remaining postulates of Euclid, each of these axioms can be used to
prove the other, so they are equivalent in the context of absolute
geometry (this is the geometry obtained from Euclidean geometry
when the parallel postulate is removed and none of its alternatives is
used in place of it).
Traditional non-Euclidean geometries (hyperbolic and elliptic
geometries) arise when the parallel axiom is replaced with an
alternative one. As we have seen, the parallel axiom is equivalent to
the axiom asserting that, given a straight line and a point outside this
line, there is exactly one line parallel to the given line passing through
that point. Now, in hyperbolic geometry, by contrast, there are
infinitely many lines through that point not intersecting the line,
whereas in elliptic geometry, any line through that point intersects the
line and so there are no parallel lines.
The first treatises on hyperbolic geometry were published
independently around 1830 by the Hungarian mathematician János
Bolyai and the Russian mathematician Nikolai Lobachevski. Because
of this, hyperbolic geometry is sometimes called Bolyai-Lobachevski
geometry. In a famous lecture of 1845, the German mathematician
Bernhard Riemann founded the field of Riemannian geometry. He
constructed a family of geometries which are non-Euclidean by giving
a formula for a family of Riemannian metrics on the unit ball of
Euclidean space. The simplest of these geometries is elliptic geometry.
Secondly, the consistency of Euclidean geometry had to be proven,

namely, the impossibility to derive from the axioms of geometry a
contradiction (a statement and its negation). Actually, the proof of the
consistency of Euclidean geometry was an urgent matter at the time of
Hilbert, since the proofs of the consistency of non-Euclidean geometries
assumed this fact. For example, Eugenio Beltrami (1835-1900) had proved
in 1868 that if the hyperbolic geometry contained a contradiction, then a
contradiction would also arise in Euclidean geometry, thereby that if
Euclidean geometry was consistent, then hyperbolic geometry was also.
Finally, it was necessary to prove the independence of the axioms of
parallels and Archimedes, that is, it had to be proven that these axioms
were not a logical consequence of the other axioms of Euclidean
geometry. For only in this way it was possible to ensure that Euclidean
76 Chapter Seven
The imaginary or hyperbolic geometry of Lobachevski

In Euclidean geometry, the sum of the angles of a rectangle triangle is
equal to ߨሺൌ ͳͺͲιሻ. In the article “On the principles of geometry”
(1928), Lobachevski considered the possibility of a geometry, which
he called imaginary, in which the sum of angles in a rectangle triangle
was less than ߨ and the lines depend on the angles. Lobachevski
defined the angle of parallelism as follows: Given a line l, a
perpendicular a respect to l and a point P on a outside l, the angle of
parallelism is the angle between the perpendicular p and the parallel l’
to l, that is, the first line through P that does not meet with l:
In Euclidean geometry, this angle is always equal to ߨΤʹ, but in

Lobachevski geometry it is acute and is a function of a. In the above-
mentioned article, Lobachevski denotes this function by ‫ܨ‬ሺܽሻ, but in
the following articles he will denote it by ȫሺܽሻ. It is clear that:
௔՜଴ ȫሺܽሻ ൌ ߨΤʹ and ௔՜ஶ ȫሺܽሻ ൌ Ͳ.
Lobachevski extends this function to all the real values of a putting
ȫሺͲሻ ൌ ߨΤʹ and ȫሺെܽሻ ൌ ߨ െ ȫሺܽሻ and shows that for every
angle A, acute or obtuse, there is a value a (ܽ ൐ Ͳ if A is acute and
ܽ ൏ Ͳ if A is obtuse) such that ‫ ܣ‬ൌ ȫሺܽሻ. Then Lobachevski finds the
trigonometric formulas for rectilinear and spherical triangles in its
space.
geometry and non-Euclidean geometry (non-Archimedean geometry)

could not both be inconsistent, because if the parallel axiom (Archimedes
axiom) was a logical consequence of the other axioms of Euclidean
geometry, then non-Euclidean geometry (non-Archimedean geometry)
would be inconsistent, for the parallel axiom would be valid in it (the
Archimedean axiom) and its denial.
Regarding the importance of the demonstration of the independence of

the axioms of the parallels and of Archimedes in relation to the genesis of
the axiomatization of geometry carried out by Hilbert in his work of 1899,
Hilbert himself recognized in a letter to Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) that:
I was necessarily led to set up my axiomatic system, since I wanted to be
able to understand those geometrical propositions that I regard as the most
important results of geometrical inquiries: that the parallel axiom is not a
consequence of the other axioms, and similarly for the Archimedes axiom,
etc. 6
In fact, the axiomatic method constituted for Hilbert the ideal method to
demonstrate the logical connections between the different geometries that
had been developed throughout the nineteenth century. For this reason, as
Hilbert’s most illustrious contemporary mathematicians emphasized, his
work constituted such an important turning point in the research on the
foundations of geometry and, in general, of mathematics. Thus, for
example, the American mathematician Oswald Veblen (1880-1960) wrote
in an article on “Hilbert’s Foundations of Geometry” (1903), just three
years after the appearance of Hilbert’s work, that:
Since its appearance in 1899 Hilbert’s work on The Foundations of
Geometry has had a wider circulation than any other modern essay in the
realms of pure mathematics. 7
That same year, the great French mathematician Henri Poincaré affirmed
in a review of Hilbert’s Grundlagen for the Bulletin of the American
Mathematical Society, that:
[Hilbert’s work] made the philosophy of mathematics take a long step
forward, comparable to those which were due to Lobachevsky, to
Riemann, to Helmholtz, and to Lie.8
We could say, in short, that Grundlagen der Geometrie introduced a new

conception of the axiomatic method that changed the way of thinking and
doing mathematics throughout the 20th century, becoming a reference
textbook in geometry for future mathematicians and professors of
mathematics. In addition, it was an authentic mathematical best-seller,
with 14 editions in the twentieth century (the last one, as far as we know,

6
Frege 1976, 65.
7
Cited by Ehrlich (1994, xxiv).
8
Ibid.
78 Chapter Seven
in 1999 to celebrate its centenary), which gave a well-deserved world-

wide reputation to his author, David Hilbert.

CHAPTER EIGHT
THE AXIOMATIZATION OF GEOMETRY
Hilbert described, in the Introduction of the Festschrift, that the purpose of

this work was an attempt to find “a simple and complete system of
mutually independent axioms and to derive from them the most important
geometrical propositions.”1 We have previously mentioned the meaning
and importance of the requirements of independence and completeness in
the context of Hilbert’s geometrical researches. The requirement of
simplicity means roughly that an axiom should contain “no more than a
single idea.” This is a requirement that Hilbert had also formulated in his
lectures of 1894 and 1898/99 and that he had taken again from Hertz.
However, neither Hilbert nor the members of his circle of collaborators
were ever capable of giving an explicit or formal definition of this feature.
It is remarkable that consistency is not explicitly mentioned as one of
the requirements to be fulfilled by the axiom system set out in the
Festschrift. This is somewhat surprising, because consistency would
become the main metamathematical question in Hilbert’s future research
and, as said before, proofs of the consistency of non-Euclidean geometry
presupposed the consistency of Euclidean geometry. However, Hilbert
addressed this question right after introducing all the groups of axioms and
discussing their immediate consequences.
In the Festschrift Hilbert defined the Euclidean space as a domain of
elements of an arbitrary nature subdivided into three different systems, the
elements of which are subject to certain relationships that are specified by
the axioms. The work began, indeed, with the following definition or
explanation (Erklärung):
Let us consider three distinct systems of things. The things composing the
first system, we will call points and designate them by the letters
‫ܣ‬ǡ ‫ܤ‬ǡ ‫ܥ‬ǡ Ǥ Ǥ Ǥ Ǣ those of the second, we will call straight lines and designate
them by the letters ܽǡ ܾǡ ܿǡ ǥ Ǣ and those of the third system, we will call
planes and designate them by the Greek letters ߙǡ ߚǡ ߛǡ ǥ […] We think of
these points, straight lines, and planes as having certain mutual relations,

1
Hallet & Majer 2004, 436.

80 Chapter Eight
which we indicate by means of such words as “lie,” “between,” “parallel,”

“congruent,” “continuous,” etc. The complete and exact description of
these relations follows as a consequence of the axioms of geometry.2
These axioms are formulated for three systems of things named “points,”
“lines” and “planes” in order to describe or specify certain fundamental
relations between these things which he indicates by the words “lie,”
“between,” “parallel,” “congruent” and “continuous.” Euclid had defined
“point” as “that which has no parts,” “line” as a “breadthless length” and
“surface” as “that which has length and breadth only.” However, he hadn’t
defined the meaning of “part,” “length” and “breadth.” Thus, only the
spatial intuition of these undefined terms could help the understanding of
the previous concepts. So Euclid’s definitions did not contribute at all to
the rigor of geometry. Hilbert, however, made no attempt to define
“point,” “line” or “plane,” but simply postulated the existence of three
systems of arbitrary elements that he called “points,” “lines” and “planes,”
but could have also called “chairs,” “tables” and “beer mugs”–the
example, as reported by Blumenthal, is from Hilbert!–because what really
matters is not the nature of the elements, but the fact that these elements
satisfy the axioms.
If we do not think of the above elements as objects of our spatial
intuition, we do not have to think of the axioms as truths relating to real
space. Actually, according to Hilbert, beyond expressing “certain
associated fundamental facts of intuition,” what the axioms do is to
determine or implicitly define the fundamental relationships between the
elements of the different systems by enunciating their basic properties.3
Thus, in Hilbert’s axiomatization of geometry “the bond with reality is
cut.”4 This bond of geometry with real space constituted not only for
Euclid, but also for Pasch, Federigo Enriques (1871-1946), Veronese,
Mario Pieri (1860-1913) or Klein, the source from which geometric
intuition sprouts. From Hilbert’s Festschrift onwards “geometry has
become pure mathematics. The questions of whether and how to apply to
reality is the same in geometry as it is in other branches of mathematics.”5

2
Hilbert 2004, 437.
3
Hilbert doesn’t use the term implicit definition, introduced by Joseph Gergonne
(1771-1859), but when he introduces the second and third group of axioms, he says
that these groups of axioms define (definieren) respectively the relations of order
and congruence.
4
Freudenthal 1962, 618.
5
Ibid.

The Axiomatization of Geometry 81
Since there are five basic relations between the elements of the
different systems–“lie,” “between,” “congruent,” “parallel” and
“continuous”–, there are also five groups of axioms that define these
relations: I. Axioms of incidence, II. Axioms of order, III. Axioms of
congruence, IV. Parallel Axiom and V. Axioms of continuity. The first
group of axioms defines the relation of incidence or “lies on”: “a point lies
on a line,” “a line lies on a plane” and “a point lies on a plane.” The
second group of axioms defines the order relation or “lies between”: “a
point lies on a line between two points.” This relation was not defined in
the work of Euclid, despite being fundamental for proving most of the
properties of plane geometry. Thus, for example, it is necessary to define
the concepts of segment and angle and to distinguish between the inner
and outer points of a triangle.
The third group of axioms is constituted by a single axiom, the famous
Euclid’s fifth postulate or parallel axiom. It would seem perhaps more
logical that Hilbert had considered the relation of parallelism as a
primitive relation, as he had done with incidence, order and congruence
relations. But Hilbert preferred to define the relation of parallelism in
terms of the relation of incidence and, indeed, what is more common today
is to define first the relation of parallelism in the manner indicated and
then to state the parallel axiom. Actually, the fact that the parallel axiom is
considered apart from the rest of the axioms is due only to its historical
importance, especially in relation to the development of non-Euclidean
geometries.
The fourth group of axioms defines the relation of congruence between
segments and angles, which is basic to the introduction of the concept of
measure, being the measure a real number (length of a segment or
measurement of an angle) associated with a segment or angle (the concept
of measure is introduced from the relation of congruence by stipulating
that two segments or angles have the same measure if, and only if, they are
congruent).
The last group of axioms includes the Axiom of Archimedes (V.1) and
an Axiom of completeness (Vollständigkeitsaxiom) (V.2), added for the
first time in the French translation of 1900 and present from the second
edition of the Festschrift on. These axioms allow to establish a bijective
correspondence between the set of points in a straight line and the system
of real numbers and, therefore, to use the real numbers to introduce the
metric ideas of length and measure of angles from the relation of
congruence. These ideas are at the same time essential for the study of the
similarity of figures and areas. The first continuity axiom is the axiom of
Archimedes, which is nothing more than a geometric statement of the

82 Chapter Eight
well-known principle of Archimedes. If we assume indeed the idea of

length and ܽ is the length‫ܣܣ‬ଵ and ܾ the length AB (see the formulation of
the axiom in the textbox below), then the axiom can be formulated in its
most common analytic form as follows:
(Arquimedes principle): Let ܽ ൐ Ͳ and ܾ ൐ Ͳ be arbitrary real numbers,
then there is a positive integer n such that ݊ܽ ൐ ܾ.
Archimedes’ axiom converts the set of points of a straight line into an

Archimedean ordered field–assuming the order relation is defined in the
usual form–, which ensures that all the points of a straight line can be
injected into the real numbers–since it can be demonstrated that any
Archimedean ordered field is included in the system of real numbers.
However, it might happen that the above set of points, despite
satisfying the previous axioms (the axiom of Archimedes included), could
be extended with the addition of new points, with which the set of points
of a straight line would be no more in one-to-one correspondence with the
system of real numbers and then one could not use the real numbers to
measure segments and angles. The immediate consequence of this is that
the system of axioms presented by Hilbert in the first edition of
Grundlagen der Geometrie was not complete. For example, it was
incapable of proving that a straight line with points inside and outside a
circle must intersect this circle. For this reason, from the second edition
on, Hilbert added to the previous axiom system an axiom of completeness,
which affirmed basically that it is not possible to add new points to the
points in this system, so that the system that is obtained by composition
satisfies all the axioms. In more technical terms, we could say that the
axiom of completeness states that the Euclidean space characterized by the
previous axioms, including the completeness Axiom, is a maximal (not
extensible) model of the axioms I-V-1.
To prove the consistency and independence of the axioms above,
particularly the independence of the Euclidean postulate and Archimedes’
axiom, Hilbert developed and perfected a method whose basic idea was to
find a model for the axioms of the theory in question (e.g., Euclidean
geometry or hyperbolic geometry), that is, a well-defined set in which to
interpret the primitive terms of the theory, so that the axioms turn out to be
true and thereby, if the rules of inference preserve truth, the theorems
inferred from them will also be true. If all the axioms of the theory turn out
to be true in the model, then the theory is consistent relative to this model.
If all axioms but one are true in the model, then this axiom is independent
from the other ones.

The axiomatization of Euclidean geometry

(Grundlagen der Geometrie, 1899)
Primitive terms: point, straight line, plane, lying on, lying between,
being congruent.
Group of axioms I: Axioms of connection (or incidence)
I 1. Two distinct points ‫ ܣ‬and ‫ ܤ‬always completely determine a
straight line a. We write ‫ ܤܣ‬ൌ ܽ or ‫ ܣܤ‬ൌ ܽ.
I 2. Any two distinct points of a straight line completely determine that
line; that is, if ‫ ܤܣ‬ൌ ܽ and ‫ ܥܣ‬ൌ ܽ, where ‫ܥ ് ܤ‬, then is also ‫ ܥܤ‬ൌ ܽ.
I 3. Three points ‫ܣ‬ǡ ‫ܤ‬ǡ ‫ ܥ‬not lying in the same straight line always
completely determine a plane ߙ. We write ‫ ܥܤܣ‬ൌ ߙ.
I 4. Any three points A, B, C of a plane ߙ, which do not lie in the same
straight line, completely determine that plane.
I 5. If two points A, B of a straight line ܽ lie in a plane ߙ, then every
point of ܽ lies in ߙ.
I 6. If two planes ߙǡ ߚ have a point ‫ ܣ‬in common, then they have at
least another point B in common
I 7. Upon every straight line there exist at least two points, in every
plane at least three points not lying in the same straight line, and in
space there exist at least four points not lying in a plane.
Group of axioms II: Axioms of order
II 1. If ‫ܣ‬ǡ ‫ܤ‬ǡ ‫ ܥ‬are points of a straight line and ‫ ܤ‬lies between ‫ ܣ‬and ‫ܥ‬,
then ‫ ܤ‬lies also between ‫ ܥ‬and ‫ܣ‬.
II 2. If ‫ ܣ‬and ‫ ܥ‬are two points in a straight line, then there is always at
least one point ‫ ܤ‬which lies between ‫ ܣ‬and ‫ܥ‬, and at least one point ‫ܦ‬
such that ‫ ܥ‬lies between ‫ ܣ‬and ‫ܦ‬.
II 3. Of any three points of a straight line, there is always one, and only
one, which lies between the other two.
II 4. Any four points any ‫ܣ‬ǡ ‫ܤ‬ǡ ‫ܥ‬ǡ ‫ ܦ‬of a straight line can always be
ordered in such a way that ‫ ܤ‬lies between ‫ ܣ‬and ‫ ܥ‬and also between ‫ܣ‬
and ‫ ܦ‬and, furthermore, that ‫ ܥ‬lies between ‫ ܣ‬and ‫ ܦ‬and also between
‫ ܤ‬and ‫ܦ‬.
Definition. We call the system of two points ‫ ܣ‬and ‫ܤ‬, which lie on a
straight-line ܽ, a segment and denote it by ‫ ܤܣ‬or ‫ܣܤ‬. The points
between ‫ ܣ‬and ‫ ܤ‬are called the points of the segment ‫ ܤܣ‬or also the
points lying within the segment ‫ܤܣ‬. All other points in the straight line
ܽ are called the points lying outside the ‫ ܤܣ‬segment. The points ‫ܣ‬ǡ ‫ܤ‬
are called the final points of the segment ‫ܤܣ‬.
II 5. Let ‫ܣ‬ǡ ‫ܤ‬ǡ ‫ ܥ‬be three points not lying in the same straight line and
cont. p. 84

84 Chapter Eight
let ܽ be a straight line on the ‫ ܥܤܣ‬plane that does not meet with any of
the points ‫ܣ‬ǡ ‫ܤ‬ǡ ‫ܥ‬. If, then, the straight line ܽ passes through a point of
the segment ‫ܤܣ‬, it will always pass through either a point of the
segment ‫ ܥܤ‬or through a point of the segment ‫ܥܣ‬.
Group of axioms III: The axiom of parallels (Euclid’s postulate)
III. In a plane ߙ, one can always trace through a point ‫ܣ‬, lying outside
of a straight-line ܽ, one and only one straight line which does not
intersect the line ܽ. This straight line is called the parallel to ܽ through
the point ‫ܣ‬.
Group of axioms IV: Axioms of congruence
IV 1. If ‫ܣ‬ǡ ‫ ܤ‬are two points on a straight line ܽ and, furthermore, ‫ܣ‬ᇱ is
a point on the same or another straight line ܽᇱ , then, on a determinate
side of ‫ܣ‬ᇱ on the straight line ܽᇱ , one can always find one and only one
point ‫ܤ‬ᇱ , so that the segment ‫( ܤܣ‬or ‫ )ܣܤ‬is congruent to the segment
‫ܣ‬ᇱ ‫ܤ‬ᇱ (or ‫ܤ‬ᇱ ‫ܣ‬ᇱ ); in symbols ‫ܣ ؠ ܤܣ‬ᇱ ‫ܤ‬ᇱ . Every segment is congruent to
itself, i.e., we always have ‫ܤܣ ؠ ܤܣ‬.
IV 2. If a segment ‫ ܤܣ‬is congruent to the segment ‫ܣ‬ᇱ ‫ܤ‬ᇱ and also to the
segment ‫ܣ‬ᇱᇱ ‫ܤ‬ᇱᇱ , then the segment ‫ܣ‬ᇱ ‫ܤ‬ᇱ is also congruent to the segment
‫ܣ‬ᇱᇱ ‫ܤ‬ᇱᇱ ; that is, if ‫ܣ ؠ ܤܣ‬ᇱ ‫ܤ‬ᇱ and ‫ܣ ؠ ܤܣ‬ᇱᇱ ‫ܤ‬ᇱᇱ , then also ‫ܣ‬ᇱ ‫ܤ‬ᇱ ‫ܣ ؠ‬ᇱᇱ ‫ܤ‬ᇱᇱ .
IV 3. Let ‫ ܤܣ‬and ‫ ܥܤ‬be two segments on the straight-line ܽ which
have no points in common and, furthermore, let ‫ܣ‬ᇱ ‫ܤ‬ᇱ and ‫ܤ‬ᇱ ‫ ܥ‬ᇱ be two
segments on the same or of another straight line ܽᇱ also without any
point in common. Then, if ‫ܣ ؠ ܤܣ‬ᇱ ‫ܤ‬ᇱ and ‫ܤ ؠ ܥܤ‬ᇱ ‫ ܥ‬ᇱ , we always have
that ‫ܣ ؠ ܥܣ‬ᇱ ‫ ܥ‬ᇱ .
Definition. Let ߙ be an arbitrary plane and h, k any two different half-
rays in ߙ that emerge from the point O which are part of two different
straight lines. We call this system of two different half-rays h, k an
angle and represent it with the symbol ‫ס‬ሺ݄ǡ ݇ሻ or ‫ס‬ሺ݇ǡ ݄ሻ.
IV 4. Let ‫ס‬ሺ݄ǡ ݇ሻ be an angle in a plane ߙ and let ܽᇱ be a straight line
in a plane ߙ ᇱ . Suppose also, that in the plane ߙ ᇱ , a definite side of ܽᇱ is
assigned. We denote by ݄ᇱ a half-ray of the straight line ܽᇱ that has its
origin in the point ܱᇱ of this line. Then in the plane ߙ ᇱ there is one and
only one half-ray ݇ ᇱ such that the angle ሺ݄ǡ ݇ሻ, or ሺ݇ǡ ݄ሻ, is congruent
to the angleሺ݄ᇱ ǡ ݇ ᇱ ሻ and, at the same time, all the interior points of the
angle ሺ݄ᇱ ǡ ݇ ᇱ ሻ lie on the given side of ܽᇱ . In symbols: ‫ס‬ሺ݄ǡ ݇ሻ ‫ؠ‬
‫ס‬ሺ݄ᇱ ǡ ݇ ᇱ ሻ. Every angle is congruent to itself, that is, we always have
‫ס‬ሺ݄ǡ ݇ሻ ‫ס ؠ‬ሺ݄ǡ ݇ሻ.
IV 5. If the angleሺ݄ǡ ݇ሻ is congruent to the angle ሺ݄ᇱ ǡ ݇ ᇱ ሻ and also to the
cont. p. 85

angle ሺ݄ᇱᇱ ǡ ݇ ᇱᇱ ሻ, then the angle ሺ݄ᇱ ǡ ݇ ᇱ ሻ is congruent to ሺ݄ᇱᇱ ǡ ݇ ᇱᇱ ሻ, that is

to say, if ‫ס‬ሺ݄ǡ ݇ሻ ‫ס ؠ‬ሺ݄ᇱ ǡ ݇ ᇱ ሻ and ‫ס‬ሺ݄ǡ ݇ሻ ‫ס ؠ‬ሺ݄ᇱᇱ ǡ ݇ ᇱᇱ ሻ, then we always
also have ‫ס‬ሺ݄ᇱ ǡ ݇ ᇱ ሻ ‫ס ؠ‬ሺ݄ᇱᇱ ǡ ݇ ᇱᇱ ሻ.
IV 6. If for the two triangles ‫ ܥܤܣ‬and ‫ܣ‬ᇱ ‫ܤ‬ᇱ ‫ ܥ‬ᇱ the congruences ‫ؠ ܤܣ‬
‫ܣ‬ᇱ ‫ܤ‬ᇱ , ‫ܣ ؠ ܥܣ‬ᇱ ‫ ܥ‬ᇱ and ‫ܤס ؠ ܥܣܤס‬ᇱ ‫ܣ‬ᇱ ‫ ܥ‬ᇱ are valid, then the congruences
‫ܣס ؠ ܥܤܣס‬ᇱ ‫ܤ‬ᇱ ‫ ܥ‬ᇱ and ‫ܣס ؠ ܤܥܣס‬ᇱ ‫ ܥ‬ᇱ ‫ܤ‬ᇱ also hold.
Group of axioms V: Axioms of continuity (Archimedes’ and
completeness axioms)
V 1. Let ‫ܣ‬ଵ be any point on a straight line between two arbitrary given
points, A and B. Take the points ‫ܣ‬ଶ ǡ ‫ܣ‬ଷ ǡ ‫ܣ‬ସ ǡ ǥ in such a way that ‫ܣ‬ଵ lies
between A and ‫ܣ‬ଶ , ‫ܣ‬ଶ between ‫ܣ‬ଵ and ‫ܣ‬ଷ , ‫ܣ‬ଷ between ‫ܣ‬ଶ and ‫ܣ‬ସ , and
so on. Moreover, let the segments ‫ܣܣ‬ଵ , ‫ܣ‬ଵ ‫ܣ‬ଶ , ‫ܣ‬ଶ ‫ܣ‬ଷ , ‫ܣ‬ଷ ‫ܣ‬ସ ,... be equal
to one another. Then there is always in the series of points ‫ܣ‬ଶ ǡ ‫ܣ‬ଷ ǡ ‫ܣ‬ସ ǡ ǥ
a point ‫ܣ‬௡ such that B lies between A and ‫ܣ‬௡ .
V 2. The elements of the geometry (points, straight lines and planes)
constitute a system of objects that does not admit any extension when
one accepts the previous axioms. In other words: To a system of points,
straight lines, and planes, it is impossible to add other elements in such a
manner that, in the system so obtained, the axioms I-V, VI are still
valid.
Thus, for example, to prove the non-contradiction of the axioms of plane

geometry, Hilbert appeals to a simple model provided by analytic
geometry. In the first edition of Grundlagen, Hilbert used the system of
algebraic numbers ȳ obtained from 1 for the four elementary operations
and the operation หξͳ ൅ ݊ଶ ห ,where n is a previously given number. In this
model, a point is represented by an ordered pair ‫ݔۃ‬ǡ ‫ ۄݕ‬of real numbers, a
straight line by an ordered triple of numbers ‫ݑۃ‬ǡ ‫ݒ‬ǡ ‫ۄݓ‬. Analytic geometry
then translates the fundamental relations and proves that the axioms are
satisfied: The existence of the equation ‫ ݔݑ‬൅ ‫ ݕݒ‬൅ ‫ ݓ‬ൌ Ͳ expresses the
fact that the point ‫ݔۃ‬ǡ ‫ ۄݕ‬lies on the line ‫ݑۃ‬ǡ ‫ݒ‬ǡ ‫ۄݓ‬, i.e., the relation of
incidence; regarding the relation of order, ‫ݑۃ‬ǡ ‫ ۄݒ‬is said to be between
‫ݓۃ‬ǡ ‫ ۄݔ‬and ‫ݕۃ‬ǡ ‫ ۄݖ‬if there are real numbers ‫ݎ‬ǡ ‫ݏ‬ǡ ‫ ݐ‬such that ‫ ݑݎ‬൅ ‫ ݒݏ‬ൌ ‫ ݓݎ‬൅
‫ ݔݏ‬ൌ ‫ ݕݎ‬൅ ‫ ݖݏ‬ൌ ‫ ݐ‬and either ‫ ݓ‬൏ ‫ ݑ‬൏ ‫ ݕ‬or ‫ ݓ‬൐ ‫ ݑ‬൐ ‫ ݕ‬or ‫ ݔ‬൏ ‫ ݒ‬൏ ‫ ݖ‬or
‫ ݔ‬൐ ‫ ݒ‬൐ ‫ݖ‬. Finally, the relation of congruence between segments and
angles is defined by groups of translations and rotations in the plane
(hence the need of the operation หξͳ ൅ ݊ଶ ห). In the domain ȳ, the axioms

86 Chapter Eight
of the I-IV groups and the axiom of Archimedes are then satisfied.
However, the axiom of completeness is not satisfied, because ȳ is
extensible to other domains in which all the previous axioms are satisfied.
One of these domains is the field of real numbers, which is an
Archimedean ordered field that is not extensible to any other ordered
Archimedean field containing it properly. Therefore, if instead of ȳ we
consider the field of real numbers, plane Cartesian geometry will provide
the model of Euclidean geometry Hilbert was looking for, since under this
interpretation, the axioms of groups I-IV and the two axioms of continuity
(the Archimedean and completeness axioms) become truths of real number
theory. Extending the above argument to spatial geometry is not a
problem.
Regarding the mutual independence of the different axioms, it is worth
mentioning the proof of the independence of the parallel axiom of the
parallel and Archimedes’ axiom, from which follows respectively the
consistency of the hyperbolic geometry of Lobachevski and Bolyai and the
non-Archimedean geometry of Veronese. Regarding the independence of
the parallel postulate, Hilbert appealed to the abstract geometric model
that Cayley had constructed inside a conic, where the points and straight-
lines are defined from the Euclidean points and straight-lines and a group
of collineations allows fixing the relationships of angles and lengths. Felix
Klein had indeed shown that Cayley’s geometric model satisfied all the
axioms of Euclid, except for the axiom of the parallel. More exactly, that
the geometry realized inside a conic is the geometry of Lobachevski. To
prove the independence of Archimedes’ axiom from the other axioms,
Hilbert considers the same set of algebraic numbers ȳ previously
introduced and the set of algebraic functions in an indeterminate ‫ ݐ‬on this
field௅with the same five operations as before and where ݊ is now an
arbitrary function generated by the five operations. The order is obtained
by defining ܽ ൏ ܾ for two functions ܽ and ܾ of ‫ ݐ‬if ܿ ൌ ܽ െ ܾ is always
positive or negative for a ‫ ݐ‬large enough. For any positive rational number,
‫ ݍ‬െ ‫ ݐ‬is then always negative for a t large enough, so that ‫ ݍ‬൏ ‫ ݐ‬for every
‫ݍ‬. In other words, the axiom of Archimedes is not valid.

CHAPTER NINE
HILBERT AND AMERICAN

POSTULATIONAL ANALYSIS
One of the places where the impact of Hilbert’s Grundlagen was stronger
was in the young American mathematical community. The last quarter of
the 19th century was a time of great prosperity and growth in the United
States, which had a decisive influence on the creation of new and
important centres of mathematical research and, in general, on the
formation of many of the institutions of higher education that are today
leaders in the whole world.
As great fortunes were made on the railroads, the telegraphs, and industrial
expansion in general, individuals like Johns Hopkins and John D.
Rockefeller endowed universities through their private philanthropy. The
presidents of these new schools, well aware of the educational scenes
abroad and especially in Germany, France, and Great Britain, crafted their
new institutional philosophies informed by the examples of those foreign
systems. In particular, many of them adopted the production of research
and of future researchers as explicit missions for their faculties and
schools.1
For example, Daniel Coit Gilman (1831-1908), the first president of Johns
Hopkins University, asked himself in the opening lesson of this university
in 1876: What are we aiming at? And he responded: “the encouragement
of research . . . and the advancement of individual scholars, who by their
excellence will advance the sciences they pursue, and the society where
they dwell.”2 Gilman believed that teaching and research were
interdependent, that success in one depends on success in the other, and
that a modern university like Johns Hopkins must do both well.

1
Parshall 1996, 292.
2
Inaugural Address of Gilman as first president of the John Hopkins University
(http://webapps.jhu.edu/jhuniverse/information_about_hopkins/about_jhu/daniel_c
oit_gilman/).
88 Chapter Nine
At the University of Chicago, a university financed by the philanthropy

of John D. Rockefeller and opened in 1892, a strong emphasis was placed
on securing a research faculty of the highest quality. William Rainey
Harper, the University’s first president, envisioned “a modern research
university that would combine an English-style undergraduate college and
a German-style graduate research institute.”3 This emphasis on research of
such universities as Johns Hopkins and Chicago revolutionized higher
education in America.
The three figures who played a decisive role in the formation of a
powerful community of researchers in mathematics in the United States
were James Joseph Sylvester, Felix Klein and Eliakim Hastings Moore
(1862-1932). Sylvester was a British mathematician who, with Arthur
Cayley, was a cofounder of invariant theory. He went to the United States
in 1876 where he became the first professor of Mathematics at Johns
Hopkins and founded the American Journal of Mathematics in 1878. As
remarked by E. T. Bell:
Sylvester’s enthusiasm for algebra during his professorship at the Johns
Hopkins University in 1877-1883 was without doubt the first significant
influence the United States had experienced in its attempt to lift itself out
of the mathematical barbarism it appears to have enjoyed prior to 1878
[…] Under Sylvester’s personal inspiration, several of his pupils did
creditable and even brilliant work; but when they left the warmth of his
enthusiastic personality, they either abandoned mathematical research, or
rapidly chilled in a deadening round of pedagogical drudgery in colleges
and universities administered by mediocrities for the perpetuation of
mediocrity.4
When Sylvester returned to Britain in 1883, his role as a mentor for the
young American mathematicians desirous of an advanced mathematical
research was taken over by Klein, who trained many PhD students in
Leipzig and Göttingen (and indirectly in other German universities). In
fact, during the 80s and 90s, Klein had a profound influence on many
American young mathematicians who would be responsible for laying the
foundations for mathematical research and its teaching in American
universities in the beginnings of the 20th century. For example, during the
winter semester of the 1887/88 academic year, Klein had six American
students enrolled in their courses: M. W. Haskel and W. F. Osgood of
Harvard, H. S. White of Wesleyan University, H. D. Thompson of
Princeton, B. W. Snow of Cornell University and H. W. Tyler of the

3
Information excerpted from https://www.uchicago.edu/about/history/.
4
Bell 1938, 2.
Hilbert and American Postulational Analysis 89
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which represented a substantial

part of Klein’s advanced students. Another significant example of Klein’s
enormous influence on the development of the United States mathematical
community is the fact that for a brief period most of the American
Mathematical Society officials, including six presidents and 13 Vice-
presidents, had been his students.
Among the most notable events that gave a definitive boost to
mathematical research in the United States, it is worth highlighting the
International Mathematical Congress, organized by Moore and his
colleagues from the University of Chicago in conjunction with the World’s
Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893. Klein attended the
Congress commissioned by the Prussian Ministry of Education Friedrich
Althoff and gave a very influential course of lectures on mathematics at
the nearby Northwestern University in Evanston. The aim of these lectures
was to “pass in review some of the principal phases of the most recent
development of mathematical thought in Germany.”5 Actually, the
mathematical spectrum reviewed in these lectures was broad: algebraic
curves and surfaces, ideal numbers, higher algebraic equations,
hyperelliptic and Abelian functions, non-Euclidean geometries, etc. But
there were also lectures devoted to the work of his teacher Clebsch and of
his colleague Sophus Lie, and to general topics such as “the relation of
pure mathematics to the applied sciences,” “the study of mathematics at
Göttingen” or “the development of mathematics at the German
universities.”
Among the attendees to the Evanston Colloquium–this was indeed the
official name of the event–were Moore, professor of Mathematics at the
University of Chicago, Oskar Bolza (1857-1942) and Heinrich Maschke
(1853-1908), assistant professors at the same university. It was probably
his attendance to the Evanston Colloquium that inspired Moore to create a
first-rate mathematical research centre in Chicago that could compete with
the monopoly of universities on the East Coast of the United States,
particularly Harvard and Johns Hopkins.
Moore had spent one year abroad studying mathematics in Germany
after graduating at Yale University. “He went first to Gottingen, in the
summer of 1885, where he studied the German language and prepared
himself for the winter of 1885-86 in Berlin. The professors of mathematics
most prominent in Gottingen at that time were Weber, Schwarz, and
Klein. At Berlin, Weierstrass and Kronecker were lecturing.”6 After

5
Klein 1894, 1.
6
Bliss and Dickson 1935, 85.
90 Chapter Nine
returning to the USA in 1886 he took different posts at Northwestern

University and Yale University. “When the University [of Chicago]
opened in the autumn of 1892 he was appointed professor and acting head
of the department of mathematics. In 1896, after four years of unusual
success in organizing the new department, he was made its permanent
head, and he held this position until his partial retirement from active
service in 1931.”7
Fig. 9-1 Eliakim Hasting Moore
Before its creation, most American graduates who wanted to continue their
training as mathematicians travelled to Germany, especially to Göttingen.
But Moore, with the collaboration of Bolza and Maschke, two German
mathematicians who had studied with Klein in Göttingen before
immigrating to the United States, set up a department that was able to
attract some of the most brilliant young American mathematicians who
wanted to devote themselves to research. Thanks to the efforts of Moore,
Bolza and Maschke toward strengthening several institutional and

7
Ibid., 86.
organizational structures inspired in that of the German universities,

particularly Göttingen, the University of Chicago quickly became the most
important mathematical research centre in the United States:
In addition to the regular lecture courses that they offered in the established
areas of late nineteenth-century mathematics௅invariant theory, the theory
of substitutions, elliptic function theory, among others௅the Chicago
mathematicians also incorporated the seminar into their overall
pedagogical approach. As especially Bolza and Maschke knew from first-
hand experience, the seminar served as a fertile seedbed for the
germination of new mathematical ideas along more specialized lines. The
Chicagoans further augmented this learning device with what they called
the “Mathematical Club,” a series of biweekly meetings throughout the
academic year in which speakers, both faculty and students, presented
expositions of the recently published results of other mathematicians or of
their own evolving ideas. The atmosphere fostered by this faculty and
through these means produced in short order a number of first-rate
mathematicians, notably Leonard E. Dickson, Oswald Veblen, Robert L.
Moore, and George D. Birkhoff.8
Considering the above facts, it comes as no surprise that one of the places
where the publication of Grundlagen der Geometrie had an immediate
influence was the United States and, specifically, the University of
Chicago. In the fall of 1901, Moore conducted a seminar on the
foundations of geometry and analysis, which constituted the basis of his
paper “On the projective axioms of Geometry” (1902).9 He introduced his
students to and discussed with them the latest literature on the topic,
particularly Hilbert’s Festschrift and a recent article of Friedrich Schur
(1856-1932), “Über die Grundlagen der Geometrie” (1901), where he
contested Hilbert’s claim of the independence of the axioms of connection
(incidence) and order. Regarding the axioms of connection, order and
congruence, Hilbert had stated in Grundlagen that “it is easy to show that
the axioms of these groups are each independent of the others of the same
group.”10 But this, as Schur observed, did not grant that the axioms were,
in fact, mutually independent. More specifically, Schur argued that three
of Hilbert’s axioms of connection followed from the other four axioms of
connection together with the five axioms of order. Moore agreed with

8
Parshall 1996, 292.
9
According to Moore “this paper has been prepared in connection with my current
Chicago seminar-course on the foundations of geometry and analysis, and queries
and remarks of members of this course, in particular, of Mr. O. Veblen, have been
a source of much stimulus” (Moore 1902, 143, footnote *).
10
Hilbert 2004, 456.
92 Chapter Nine
Schur in that Hilbert’s system was redundant but noticed that he had not
correctly identified the actual redundancy. Moore proved that the
redundancy in Hilbert’s system involved only one axiom of connection
and one axiom of order.
To understand why Hilbert just worried about the mutual independence
of axioms inside each group of axioms, it must be noticed that Hilbert’s
groups of axioms correspond to geometric relations that have an intuitive
independent content and which he therefore considers the fundamental
relations. For example, in contrast to his predecessors, he sharply separates
the connection and ordering axioms, which is not strictly necessary from a
logical point of view. Hence the issues of independence between axioms
of distinct groups were secondary for Hilbert, since the axiom system as a
whole was built from geometrical intuitive groups of axioms
(corresponding to each of the fundamental relations), not from the
standpoint of logical economy. Thus, when Schur and Moore analysed the
logical dependence between axioms of distinct groups they made a step
forward that Hilbert had not foreseen.
Moore’s analysis moved still further away from the original spirit of
Hilbert’s axiomatic analysis. When analysing the different groups of
axioms, Hilbert was implicitly granting these groups of axioms a genuine
mathematical interest, as they expressed facts of our spatial intuition about
relations between different systems of things, which were the object of
study of geometry–at least in a first intuitive, pre-critical stage.11 For
Moore, however, the axiom systems as such became the subject of study,
regardless of the mathematical interest that these systems might have. The
problem addressed by Moore was whether these systems of axioms could
be formulated more conveniently from the deductive point of view,
regardless of whether they had any intuitive geometrical meaning.
Obviously, this type of analysis was also available to Hilbert, given his
formalistic conception of the axiomatic method, but neither Hilbert nor his
collaborators had any interest in developing a logical analysis of the
axioms per se. For Hilbert, the axiomatic analysis was the final and ideal
stage of any mathematical discipline. For Moore, the systems of axioms or
postulates themselves were the starting point, thus creating a new

11
Although from Hilbert’s formal standpoint, “the basic elements can be thought
of in any way one likes,” for example, as chairs, tables and beer-mugs, and so the
axioms can also be thought as defining the different kind of “relations between
these things” (see Chapter 8), it is just insofar they express facts of our spatial
intuition about the relations between points, lines and planes that they have a
genuine mathematical interest, i.e. they can be called properly geometrical axioms.
scientific discipline, the analysis of systems of postulates or postulational

analysis.
This new perspective would be developed by Moore and other
American mathematicians in the forthcoming years. Particularly important
in this direction was the figure of Edward Huntington (1874-1952). Just a
few months after the publication of Moore’s article, he published two
papers “A complete set of postulates for the theory of absolute continuous
magnitude” (1902) and “Simplified definition of a group” (1902), which
are usually considered the first published contributions of American
postulational analysts after Moore’s paper. In the first paper, Huntington
proposed a set of six postulates or primitive propositions “from which the
mathematical theory of absolute continuous magnitude can be deduced.”12
An important feature of Huntington’s presentation of these postulates is
that they were considered independent of any interpretation, that is, as
uninterpreted conditions that could be themselves object of a metatheorical
study. The object of the paper was indeed
To show that these six postulates form a complete set; that is, they are (I)
consistent, (II) sufficient, (III) independent (or irreducible). By these three
terms we mean: (I) there is at least one assemblage in which the chosen
rule of combination satisfies all the six requirements; (II) there is
essentially only one such assemblage possible; (III) none of the six
postulates is a consequence of the other five.13
Consistency and independence were two of the three properties that

Hilbert required to axiomatic systems (the other one was completeness).
Sufficiency is what is nowadays called categoricity, as can be seen from
Huntington’s proof that all models of his set of postulates are isomorphic.
As we will see later, the term “categoricity” was introduced by Veblen in
1904. “But the notion of categoricity and its relevance for proving that an
axiom system is semantically complete is due to Huntington, as Veblen
acknowledges.”14
In the second paper, Huntington analysed the definition of group given
by Heinrich Weber in his famous Lehrbuch der Algebra (1896). As
observed by Huntington, Weber’s system of postulates contained many
redundancies, so the purpose of his analysis was precisely to discover and

12
Huntington 1902a, 264.
13
Ibid.
14
Scanlan 1991, 986. A theory is semantically complete if any two models of it
satisfy all the same sentences. It is clear that any categorical theory is semantically
complete, as there is then only one isomorphism class of models, and these all
satisfy the same sentences.
94 Chapter Nine
eliminate them. More specifically, Huntington reduced Weber’s postulates

to just three postulates, which he then proved to be independent. In a
subsequent paper Huntington gave a second set of four postulates for
group theory. This paper was presented in a meeting of the American
Mathematical Society (April 1902), where Moore also presented a paper,
published in the Transactions the same year, in which he gave a set of six
postulates. Moore analysed his own postulates and those of Huntington in
relation to them, adding to Huntington’s first set the explicit statement of
the closure postulate. In this way, Moore took a step further comparing
different systems of postulates for the same discipline.
These papers were only the beginning of a new trend, as confirmed by
numerous articles on postulational analysis appearing in major American
mathematical journals, particularly in the Transactions of the American
Mathematical Society, but also in the Bulletin of the same society. The
analysis of the systems of axioms or postulates was almost always very
similar to and followed the guidelines marked by Huntington’s seminal
papers, which were at the same time inspired by Hilbert’s requirements on
the axiomatic method. As we have seen, the aim was to demonstrate that
the sets of postulates were complete, that is, that the postulates were
consistent, sufficient (categorical) and mutually independent. If different
postulate systems for the same branch of mathematics were analysed, then
the objective was to show that these systems were equivalent, i.e., that
they amount to derive the same theorems.
For example, Leonard E. Dickson (1874-1954), Moore’s first doctoral
student, published between 1903 and 1905 several articles analysing
different systems of postulates defining the concepts of field, associative
linear algebra and group. Also, in 1904 Huntington published the
influential paper “Sets of independent postulates for the algebra of logic”
in which he compared distinct sets of postulates for Boolean algebra. But
perhaps Moore’s most outstanding student in this direction was Oswald
Veblen. His dissertation discussed a new system of axioms for geometry,
in which the notions of point and order were used as basic notions, instead
of Hilbert’s primitive concepts (point, line and plane) and relations
(connection, order and congruence). These results were published in the
paper “A system of axioms for geometry,” published in the Transactions
of the American Mathematical Society (1904), a journal in which he
published important articles in the same direction during the following
years. In Veblen own terms:
The propositions brought forward as axioms in this paper are stated in
terms of a class of elements called “points” and a relation among points
called “order;” they thus follow the trend of development inaugurated by
Pasch and continued by Peano rather than that of Hilbert or Pieri. All other
geometrical concepts, such as line, plane, space, motion, are defined in
terms of point and order. In particular, the congruence relations are made
the subject of definitions rather than of axioms. This is accomplished by
the aid of projective geometry according to the method first given
analytically by Cayley and Klein. The terms “point” and “order”
accordingly differ from the other terms of geometry in that they are
undefined.15
Veblen gave concretely a set of twelve axioms which he demonstrated to

be independent and constituted a categorical system. But in contrast to
Hilbert and Huntington he didn’t worry about their consistency. According
to Veblen, a system of axioms is categorical if there is essentially only
one set of elements that satisfy these axioms, that is, if all their models are
essentially identical or, as we would say today, isomorphic. Otherwise it is
said that the system of axioms is disjunctive. He writes that “the
categorical property of a system of propositions is referred to by Hilbert in
his ‫ލ‬Axiom der Vollständigkeit.‫”ތ‬16 But to be more precise it should be
said that categoricity is a consequence of Hilbert’s completeness axiom.
The reason for this is that the associated system of axioms for the real
number system is itself categorical and the completeness axiom, together
with the Archimedean axiom, assures a biunivocal correspondence
between the set of points of the Euclidean plane and the system of real
numbers. And in an Archimedean ordered field, the Vollständigkeitaxiom
for fields imposes categoricity.
Over the years, the experience accumulated in postulational analysis
led to a greater understanding of the essence and common features of
axiomatic systems. As we have seen, postulational analysts not only
showed how different mathematical disciplines could be explicitly
axiomatized in a formalized, uninterpreted language, but they also showed
how these axiomatized systems could themselves be the object of a
(meta)mathematical study. In this sense, postulational analysis had a great
influence on the development of mathematical logic in North America
and, ultimately, on the creation of model theory, one of the most active
research areas of logic nowadays. More immediately, postulational
analysis also provided a wealthy collection of standardized axiomatic
systems of different mathematical disciplines that were adopted by
researchers in these disciplines or in the foundation of mathematics. An
example of this is Alfred Tarski’s (1901-1983) famous paper “Der

15
Veblen 1904, 344.
16
Ibid., 346.
96 Chapter Nine
Wahrheitsbegriff in den formalisierten Sprachen” (“The concept of truth in

formalized languages”) (1935), where the two only American
mathematicians cited are Huntington and Veblen. This, at the same time,
provided the natural framework from which the abstract research of
structural type would come in the future. This was the case, for example,
of the definition and structural analysis of the abstract notion of ring by
Abraham Fraenkel (1891-1965), who was influenced by the work of
postulational analysis through his uncle, the mathematician Alfred Loewy
(1873-1935).17
Although from 1898 to 1938 numerous papers appeared on
postulational analysis in the American mathematical journals, particularly
in the period from 1928 to 1938,18 the most promising research on the
formalization of mathematical theories and the scope of the axiomatic
method in the same period was led by Hilbert himself and his circle of
collaborators: Ernst Zermelo (1871-1953), Paul Bernays (1888-1977) and
Wilhelm Ackermann (1896-1962), among others. Also, by the early
1930’s the most promising research on these topics was led by European
logicians and mathematicians like Kurt Gödel (1906-1978), Alfred Tarski
or Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) whose research programs were directly
inspired (at least to a great extent) by the work of Hilbert. It was in the
work of Gödel, as we will see later, where the influence of Hilbert was
most fruitful (though his results were mostly unexpected for Hilbert).

17
As remarked by L. Corry, Fraenkel “took Loewy’s and Hensel’s trains of ideas
into a new direction, leading to the definition and early research of abstract rings”
(Corry 1996, 201).
18
According to E. T. Bell’s statistics, 8,46% of the mathematical papers publishes
in the USA between 1888 and 1938 were devoted to postulational analysis. 23.3%
of the papers on postulational analysis were published between 1898 and 1907,
11.1% between 1908 and 1917, 23.5% between 1918 and 1927, and 41.1%
between 1928 and 1937భమ (Bell 1938, 7).
CHAPTER TEN
THE AXIOMATIZATION OF ANALYSIS
At the end of the summer of 1899, between the 17th and 23rd of
September, the annual meeting of the DMV took place in Munich,
together with that of the Society of German Scientists and Doctors. At this
meeting those present discussed the possibility of hosting the International
Congress of Mathematicians in Germany in 1904, for which the official
request would be made at the next Congress that was to be held in Paris
the following year. Hilbert was one of the 80 participants in the DMV
Congress and presented two articles, one on Dirichlet’s principle and
another on the concept of number.
In the summer of 1899, just after the publication of Grundlagen der
Geometrie, Hilbert had concentrated all his energies in trying to “revive”
the so-called Dirichlet principle, which had focused the attention of the
most prestigious mathematicians of the 19th century, due to its importance
both theoretical௅to prove the existence and unicity of solutions for
problems related to limit values௅and practical௅to solve numerous types of
problems that arise in physics.
In a fairly generic way, Dirichlet’s principle is a method to solve
boundary value problems of elliptic partial differential equations which
consists in reducing them to the (variational) problem of finding the
minimum value of an integral (named the Dirichlet or energy integral) in a
determinate class of functions subject to the condition that they take on
prescribed boundary values (basically, that the values of the integral do not
become infinite and they allow the problem initially raised to be solved).
Bernhard Riemann had widely used Dirichlet’s principle in his famous
dissertation of 1851 and was, in fact, the first to call it by this name in
honour to his master Dirichlet. But the principle had been heavily
criticized by Weierstrass in the late 1860’s, when he proved by means of
an example that the differential boundary problem may have a solution,
while the corresponding variational problem could not have a solution
because the value of the Dirichlet integral when solving the problem
becomes infinite in such cases. In other words, the Dirichlet principle was
not valid in all cases. But this principle had too many applications in
98 Chapter Ten
physics to completely discard it, so several mathematicians such as Carl

Neumann and Hilbert himself proposed to save it. In a few pages of the
article read at the DMV Congress, Hilbert demonstrated how, by putting
certain limitations on the nature of the differential equation in question and
its boundary values, he could avoid Weierstrass’s objections and safeguard
the vast majority of mathematical and physical applications of the
Dirichlet principle.
The other article read by Hilbert at the DMV Congress of September
1899 was entitled “Über den Zahlbegriff” (“On the concept of number”).
Encouraged by the success achieved in Grundlagen der Geometrie by the
application of the axiomatic method to geometry, in this paper Hilbert
proposed applying this method to analysis instead of the genetic method.
Hilbert described the genetic method, commonly used in the Weierstrass
school and also by Kronecker or Dedekind, dominant figures of analysis in
the second half of the nineteenth century, to introduce the concept of
number in the following terms:
Starting from the concept of the number 1, one usually imagines the further
rational positive integers 2, 3, 4, ... as arising through the process of
counting, and one develops their laws of calculation; then, by requiring
that subtraction be universally applicable, one attains the negative
numbers; next one defines fractions, say as a pair of numbers–so that every
linear function possesses a zero; and finally one defines the real number as
a cut or a fundamental sequence, thereby achieving the result that every
entire rational indefinite (and indeed every continuous indefinite) function
possesses a zero.1
Hilbert recalled, however, that, to erect geometry, one proceeds in an

essentially different way, applying the axiomatic method:
Here one customarily starts by assuming the existence of all the elements,
i.e., one postulates at the outset three systems of things (namely the points,
lines, and planes), and then–essentially following the pattern of Euclid-
brings these elements into relationship with one another by means of
certain axioms–namely the axioms of connection, of ordering, of
congruence, and of continuity. The necessary task then arises of showing
the consistency and the completeness of these axioms, i.e., it must be
proved that the application of the given axioms can never lead to
contradictions, and, further, that the system of axioms is adequate to prove
all geometrical propositions.2

1
Hilbert 1900, 180.
2
Ibid., 181.
The Axiomatization of Analysis 99
Certainly, Hilbert had not only axiomatized Euclidean geometry in his

work Grundlagen der Geometrie, but also had proved the consistency and
independence of its axioms௅the completeness followed by the axiom of
completeness. Now, Hilbert had proved the consistency of Euclidean
geometry by furnishing a model in which all the axioms of plane geometry
were satisfied. This model was that of analytical geometry, whose
consistency was taken for granted. Thus, the pending task was first to
axiomatize analysis and then to prove its consistency.
In fact, the great Italian mathematician Giuseppe Peano (1858-1932)
had axiomatized arithmetic at the end of the nineteenth century,
characterizing the system of natural numbers through the set of axioms
usually known as Peano axioms. Now, in the paper “Über den
Zahlbegriff,” Hilbert axiomatized analysis, characterizing the system of
real numbers as a maximal Archimedean ordered field, that is, an
Archimedean ordered field not extensible to another field of the same kind
that contains it. Unlike the authors who followed what Hilbert called the
genetic method, Hilbert did not define the real numbers from previously
given objects, such as rational numbers, and then prove that the system of
real numbers satisfied the aforementioned properties. On the contrary,
Hilbert asked his readers to imagine a “system of things” that already
satisfied the properties enunciated in the axioms. The system of real
numbers was precisely this system of things.
This way of proceeding raised a couple of problems. The first was that
it did not guarantee that there was any “system of things” that satisfied the
previous properties, that is to say, that the system of real numbers really
existed. This was indeed a basic problem in Hilbert’s eyes since he knew,
from his correspondence with Georg Cantor (1845-1918), that Cantor, in a
letter addressed to Dedekind on July, 1899, had noted that the existence of
the Gedankenwelt (world of thought), in which Dedekind had based his
proof of the existence of an infinite set, was equivalent to the hypothesis of
the existence of the set of all sets, which led to a logical contradiction
analogous to that which the consideration of all the ordinals or of all the
cardinals led to. Cantor thought to solve these contradictions with the
distinction between absolutely infinite or inconsistent pluralities (like the
previous ones) and consistent pluralities or sets. However, this solution
could not satisfy Hilbert, who considered the proof of the consistency of
the system of axioms through which he had characterized the real numbers
as the most appropriate mean of proving its existence. Thus, for example,
the observation made by Hilbert in “Über den Zahlbegriff” that he saw in
the proof of the consistency of the system of axioms presented in this
paper “the proof of the existence of the totality of all real numbers or–in
100 Chapter Ten
the terminology of Cantor–the proof that the system of real numbers is a

consistent (finished) set”3 was clearly an implicit critique of the solution
adopted by Cantor. Generally speaking, the problem of proving the
existence of a system of things was solved by proving that the axioms for
this system of things were consistent, since for him consistency was the
only criterion of existence. As Hilbert put it in a letter to Frege of
December 29, 1899:
If the arbitrarily posited axioms together with all their consequences do not
contradict one another, then they are true and the things defined by the
axioms exist. This is for me the criterion of truth and existence.4
The second problem raised by the application of the axiomatic method for
introducing the real number system was that this procedure did not assure
either, at least explicitly, that this system of things (in case of existing)
was unique. This issue was solved thanks to the presence of the
completeness axiom: if the real numbers are defined as a system of things
satisfying the axioms that cannot be extended with new elements (and
keep satisfying the axioms), then all the models of the axioms (all systems
of things that satisfy the axioms) will be essentially the same, and
therefore the system of real numbers will be univocally determined (up to
isomorphism) by the axioms.
The axiom of completeness was the most novel axiom of the four
axiom groups proposed by Hilbert to axiomatize analysis. As we have
already seen, Hilbert added an axiom analogous to that in the second
edition of Grundlagen der Geometrie to the list of axioms present in the
first edition. It was thanks to the completeness axiom of Grundlagen that it
was possible to introduce the concept of measurement and to “prove all the
theorems of geometry.” Similarly, Hilbert thought that a proposition about
the real numbers was true if, and only if, it followed from the axioms that
he had postulated for these numbers. Hilbert considered that the axiom of
completeness guaranteed this, since, as we have already explained, it
guaranteed what Veblen called the categoricity of the system of axioms
and, therefore, that all true sentences in a model of the axioms were true in
any other model of them. It followed from this (assuming that the
underlying logic was semantically complete) that this system of axioms
was complete in the sense that it allowed to prove or refute any
proposition about the real numbers.

3
Ewald 1996, vol. 2, 1095.
4
Frege 1976, 68.
The Axiomatization of Analysis 101
The axiomatization of analysis

(“Über den Zahlbericht,” 1900)
Let us consider a system of things; we call these things numbers and

we assign them names ܽǡ ܾǡ ܿǡ ǥ we suppose that these numbers have
among them certain relations, the precise and complete description of
which is given by the following axioms:
I. Axioms of linking
I 1. From the number ܽ and the number ܾ, there arises through
“addition” a determined number ܿ, in symbols: ܽ ൅ ܾ ൌ ܿ or ܿ ൌ ܽ ൅
ܾ.
I 2. If ܽ and ܾ are given numbers, then there always exists one and
only one number ‫ ݔ‬and also one and only one number ‫ ݕ‬such that
ܽ ൅ ‫ ݔ‬ൌ ܾ and ‫ ݕ‬൅ ܽ ൌ ܾ respectively.
I 3. There is a determinate number –it is called Ͳ– such that for every
ܽ, ܽ ൅ Ͳ ൌ ܽ and Ͳ ൅ ܽ ൌ ܽ.
I 4. From the number ܽ and the number ܾ there arises in yet another
way, through “multiplication”, a determinate number ܿ; in symbols:
ܾܽ ൌ ܿ or ܿ ൌ ܾܽ.
I 5. If ܽ and ܾ are arbitrary given numbers and ܽ is not Ͳ, then there
always exists one and only one number ‫ݔ‬, and also one and only one
number ‫ ݕ‬such that ܽ‫ ݔ‬ൌ ܾ and ‫ ܽݕ‬ൌ ܾ.
I 6. There is a determinate number –it is called ͳ– such that for every
ܽ, ܽ ή ͳ ൌ ܽ and ͳ ή ܽ ൌ ܽ.
II. Axioms of calculation
If ܽǡ ܾǡ ܿǡ ǥ are arbitrary numbers, then the following formulas always
hold:
II 1. ܽ ൅ ሺܾ ൅ ܿሻ ൌ ሺܽ ൅ ܾሻ ൅ ܿ II 2. ܽ ൅ ܾ ൌ ܾ ൅ ܽ
II 3. ܽሺܾܿሻ ൌ ሺܾܽሻܿ II 4. ܽሺܾ ൅ ܿሻ ൌ ܾܽ ൅ ܽܿ
II 5. ሺܽ ൅ ܾሻܿ ൌ ܽܿ ൅ ܾܿ II 6. ܾܽ ൌ ܾܽ
III. Axioms of order
III 1. If ܽǡ ܾ are any two different numbers, then a determinate one of
them (say ܽ) is always greater (>) than the other; the latter is then
called the smaller. In symbols: ܽ ൐ ܾ and ܾ ൏ ܽ .
III 2. If ܽ ൐ ܾ and ܾ ൐ ܿ, then ܽ ൐ ܿ.
III 3. If ܽ ൐ ܾ, then always ܽ ൅ ܿ ൐ ܾ ൅ ܿ and ܿ ൅ ܽ ൐ ܿ ൅ ܾ.
III 4. If ܽ ൐ ܾ and ܿ ൐ Ͳ, then always ܽܿ ൐ ܾܿ and ܿܽ ൐ ܾܿ.
IV. Axioms of continuity
IV 1. (Archimedean axiom) If ܽ ൐ Ͳ and ܾ ൐ Ͳ are two arbitrary
cont. p. 102
102 Chapter Ten
numbers, then it is always possible to add ܽ to itself so often that the

resulting sum has the property that ܽ ൅ ܽ ൅ ‫ ڮ‬൅ ܽ ൐ ܾ.
IV 2. (Axiom of completeness) It is not possible to add to the system
of numbers another system of objects so that the axioms I, II, III and
IV are also all satisfied in the combined system; in short: the numbers
form a system of things which is incapable of being extended while
continuing to satisfy all the axioms.
It was surely the success achieved with the safeguarding of the

Dirichlet principle which impelled Hilbert to lecture, for the first time in
his career, on the calculus of variations, during the summer semester of
1899. This is a branch of analysis that deals with problems in which (as in
the Dirichlet principle) we search for maxima and minima of defined
continuous functionals on some space of functions, or said in another way,
functions ݂ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ, belonging to a space of functions, for which a functional
‫ܫ‬ሺ݂ሻ reaches an extreme value, where ‫ܫ‬ሺ݂ሻ is composed of an integral that
depends on x, the function ݂ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ and some of its derivatives. Apart from
this course, Hilbert also taught courses on differential calculus and group
theory during the same semester. In the winter semester of the course
1899/1900, Hilbert taught courses on integral calculus, on the concept of
number and the squaring of the circle, and on the curvature of surfaces.
Amid this broad range of interests and academic activity, Hilbert received
the invitation to give a plenary lecture at the Second International
Congress of Mathematicians, which was to be held in Paris the following
summer.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE HILBERT PROBLEMS
Hilbert was aware of the opportunity to give a plenary conference in Paris

represented for him and wanted to be up to the circumstances. In his New
Year congratulations letter to Minkowski, then in Zürich, Hilbert took the
opportunity to comment to him the good news of the invitation to Paris
and asked him his opinion about the topic of his lecture. He doubted
between answering, in his lecture, another one given by Poincaré at the
First Congress of Mathematicians, held in Zurich in 1897, on the
relationship between analysis and physics, or discussing the direction of
mathematics in the next century posing some important problems that had
to be answered by mathematicians in one way or another. Minkowski
responded him in a letter of 5 January 1900, that
Most alluring would be the attempt to look into the future, in other words,
a characterisation of the problems to which the mathematicians should turn
in the future. With this, you might conceivably have people talking about
your speech even decades from now.1
Hilbert finally decided to follow the advice of Minkowski. However, in

the month of June Hilbert had not yet sent the text of his lecture to the
organizers, and the program of the Congress was sent to the participants
without the name of Hilbert. Minkowski, very disappointed, explained to
Hilbert by letter that “my desire to travel to the Congress has now
practically disappeared.”2 But Minkowski soon recovered his enthusiasm
for travelling to Paris since, in the middle of July, Hilbert sent him a new
letter with a preliminary version of the proposed address. Minkowski’s
answer to Hilbert’s letter expresses very well the expectations that this
author had deposited in Hilbert’s lecture and the profound admiration for
his friend:

1
Rüdenberg and Zassenhaus 1973, 119. In March, he also sought the opinion of
another close friend, Hurwitz (Reported by Grattan-Guinness 2000, 252).
2
Ibid., 127.
104 Chapter Eleven
Certainly [your conference] will be the event of the congress and its
success will be very lasting. I believe that this speech, which probably
every mathematician without exception will read, will make you have even
more power of attraction for young mathematicians [...] Now you have
really delimited the mathematics for the twentieth century and in most
circles you will be recognized gladly as its general director.3
These words became prophetic and, as Minkowski had foreseen, the 23

mathematical problems presented by Hilbert at the Sorbonne became the
vanguard of mathematical research in the 20th century. The fact that
Hilbert was invited to give a plenary conference in the Second Congress of
Mathematicians was already indicative of the prestige achieved by Hilbert
outside of Germany, but it was undoubtedly the Paris conference that
confirmed the leadership of Hilbert in the International mathematical
community. As remarked in the chapter of Landmark Writings in Western
Mathematics 1640-1940 dedicated to Hilbert’s mathematical problems:
That lecture and even more the written version of it has been of great
influence on the development of mathematics in the 20th century, or so it
would seem. It stems partly because of the stature of the lecturer, which
was still to grow considerably in the decades to come; partly because the
problems were well chosen; partly because they breathed a coherent view
of what mathematics is all about; and perhaps most of all because of the
incurable optimism in it all, a flat denial of Emil Du Bois-Reymond’s
claim “Ignoramus et ignorabimus.”4
Hilbert’s speech was initially scheduled for the opening session of the
Congress, but due to the delay in the arrival of the text, it was relegated to
the joint session of the two general sections, one which dealt with
Bibliography and History and the other with Teaching and Methods.
These sections were considered of inferior rank to the sections on pure
mathematics (Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, Analysis) or applied
mathematics (Mechanics), but seen in perspective, they became, thanks to
Hilbert’s talk, the true protagonists of the Congress.
Hilbert’s lecture, entitled “Mathematische Probleme” (“Mathematical
Problems”) consisted of a preamble and a list of 23 problems, of which
Hilbert only read ten (Hilbert spoke in German, but had the good sense to

3
Ibid, 129-30.
4
Hazewinkel 2005, 733. The lecture was published for the first time in
Nachrichten der Königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen,
mathematisch-physikalische Klasse, 1901, 253–297. The first French and English
translations were published in 1902.
The Hilbert Problems 105
provide the attendees with the full text of the conference in French). In the
preamble of the conference, Hilbert emphasized the importance of the
existence of problems for the development of any science and, in
particular, mathematics, as well as his conviction about the solubility of
any mathematical problem, expressed through the slogan “in mathematics
there is no ignorabimus”:
This conviction of the solvability of every mathematical problem is a
powerful incentive to the worker. We hear within us the perpetual call:
There is the problem. Seek its solution. You can find it by pure reason, for
in mathematics there is no ignorabimus.5
As could be expected, the list of problems presented by Hilbert included

problems related to invariant theory and algebraic number theory, two
fields in which Hilbert had already established himself as a first rank
mathematician. But, broadly speaking, the list contained a wide range of
problems that corresponded essentially with the mathematical interests
Hilbert had at that time: the foundations of mathematics and physics,
algebraic number theory, algebra and geometry, analysis (particularly,
calculus of variations) and its application to physics.
The modernity in the approach to some problems–especially in the
case of the problems related to the foundations of mathematics and
physics–resided not only in the fact that there were unresolved problems
that would determine an important part of future mathematical research in
these fields, but also in the importance that Hilbert gave to axiomatization
in order to solve or, even, to formulate them. The reason is that, as Hilbert
explained, the general requirement that must be established for the
solution of a mathematical problem is rigor in reasoning, which Hilbert
described as follows:
It must be possible to establish the correctness of the solution by means of
a finite number of steps based upon a finite number of hypotheses which
are implied in the statement of the problem and which must always be
exactly formulated.6
However, Hilbert was opposed to the view that only the concepts of
arithmetic and analysis are susceptible of a rigorous treatment, as this would
lead to rejecting the concepts that arise from geometry, mechanics and
physics. Thus, for example, this interpretation of the requirement of rigor

5
Hilbert 1965, vol. 3, 298.
6
Ibid., 293.
106 Chapter Eleven
would lead us to reject concepts of a geometrical origin, such as the

continuum or the concept of irrational number, whose definition had become
one of the central problems of analysis in the second half of the nineteenth
century. Ultimately, according to Hilbert, whatever the origin of a concept or
an idea was, the task of mathematics is “to investigate the principles
underlying these ideas and so to establish them upon a simple and complete
system of axioms”7 in order to achieve the aforementioned rigorous
requirement. Thus, Hilbert considered the axiomatic method the most
reliable mean to achieve the rigor necessary to solve mathematical problems,
particularly those related to the foundations of mathematics and physics.
Fig. 11-1 David Hilbert, ca. 1900
Hilbert grouped together problems with a similar content, thus obtaining

four separate groups. The first of them was constituted by six problems on

7
Ibid., 295.
the foundations of mathematics and physics. In the second group were six
problems of algebraic number theory, while the third one was a mixture of
algebraic and geometrical problems covering several topics. In the last
group were five problems of analysis, which was where the interests of
Hilbert would be directed in the immediate future. Of these 23 problems,
those discussed by Hilbert at the Congress were the problems 1, 2, 6, 7, 8,
13, 16, 19, 21 and 22. The first three were precisely the problems on the
foundations of mathematics and physics that would have a greater
relevance in the future regarding the development of the axiomatic
method, either by Hilbert himself or by other authors of the Göttingen
circle, such as his collaborator Ernst Zermelo.
The first foundational problem discussed by Hilbert and indeed the
problem that occupied the first place in the list presented by Hilbert was
the proof of the continuum hypothesis, i.e., the proof of Cantor’s
conjecture that every infinite set of real numbers is either countable (that
is, it has one-to-one correspondence with the set of natural numbers) or
has the power of the continuum (that is, it has one-to-one correspondence
with the set of real numbers) and, therefore, there is no intermediate power
between the power of the set of natural numbers and that of the continuum.
Hilbert’s second problem was to find a direct proof of the non-
contradiction or consistency of the axioms that determine the structure of
the real numbers, which he simply called arithmetic axioms, that is, “to
prove that a finite number of logical deductions based upon them can
never lead to contradictory results.”8 As we already know, Hilbert had
proved in Grundlagen der Geometrie the consistency of Euclidean
geometry by assuming the consistency of the system of real numbers,
which he had axiomatized in the article “Über den Zahlbegriff” as a
maximal Archimedean ordered field. Therefore, to demonstrate the
absolute consistency of the axioms of geometry (and, by extension, of
mathematics), it was now necessary to prove the consistency of the axioms
through which he had defined the real numbers.
Finally, Hilbert’s sixth problem asked to axiomatize “those physical
sciences in which mathematics already play an important role; in the first
rank are the theory of probabilities and mechanics.” 9 Hilbert devoted
many efforts throughout his life to the axiomatization of physical theories:
mechanics, thermodynamics, probability theory, kinetic theory of gases,

8
Ibid., 300.
9
Ibid., 306.
108 Chapter Eleven
The Continuum Hypothesis (Cantor, 1878)
In 1874 Cantor had shown that the set of algebraic numbers is

countable, but that the continuum is not: it is not possible to establish a
one-to-one correspondence between the set Թ of real numbers and the
setԳ of natural numbers. In a publication of 1878, Cantor
demonstrated that there are one-to-one correspondences between all
sets Թ௡ ǡ ݊ ൒ ͳ, and therefore, that they all have the same power. So,
there were still only two infinite powers: that of the countable sets and
that of the non-countable sets. At the end of the same paper, Cantor
stated the continuum hypothesis: every infinite set of real numbers is
either numerable or it has the power of the continuum.
From 1879 to 1884 Cantor published a series of investigations that
constitute the origin of modern set theory. In them he introduced the
transfinite numbers and the property of well-ordering. In modern
notation, the transfinite numbers are the numbers:
߱ǡ ߱ ൅ ͳǡ ǥ ǡ ߱ʹǡ ߱ʹ ൅ ͳǡ ǥ ǡ ߱͵ǡ ǥ ǡ ߱ଶ ǡ ǥ ǡ ߱ଷ ǡ ǥ ǡ ߱ఠ ǡ ǥ
Cantor named the set of natural numbers Գ the first class of numbers
(I), he named the set of numbers whose predecessors are in a bijective
correspondence with (I) the second class of the numbers (II), and so
on. All the transfinite numbers from the list above belong to the second
class of numbers, which Cantor had shown to be not countable. In
1883, Cantor proposed the principle of well-ordering, under which all
sets can be ordered and gauged by the transfinite numbers and their
classes of numbers. In this way the hypothesis of the continuum had
been transformed into the hypothesis that Թ and the second class of
numbers (II) have the same power. Finally, in a series of articles
published between 1895 and 1897, Cantor specified the notion of
power of a set through the concept of cardinal number and introduced
the notation Յ଴ ǡ Յଵ ǡ Յଶ ǡ Ǥ Ǥ Ǥ ǡ Յఈ to represent the cardinal numbers of the
successive classes of numbers. With this notation,Յ଴ is the cardinal
number of Գ, the first class of numbers, Յଵ is the cardinal of the
second class of numbers, the cardinal of the continuum is ʹՅబ (given
that Թ ൌ ࣪ሺԳሻ) and the continuum hypothesis can now be formulated
as ʹՅబ ൌ Յଵ.
electrodynamics, theory of relativity, etc. This should not be surprising

since, as we know, according to Hilbert, the difference between geometry
and physics is only a difference in the degree of development, not an
essential difference, so Hilbert considered that physics theories were
susceptible to an axiomatic treatment as soon as they reached the sufficient

degree of development.10
The three following problems discussed by Hilbert in Paris were
problems related to number theory. The first problem (problem no. 7) was
related to the Hermite and Lindemann demonstrations of the
transcendence of the numbers ݁ and ߨ (and the unified and more rigorous
proof by Hilbert himself) and asked for the irrationality and transcendence
of the numbers of the form ߙ ఉ , with ߙ algebraic and ߚ algebraic and
irrational; that is to say, numbers such as ʹξଶ o ݁ గ ൌ ݅ ିଶ௜ . The second one
(problem no. 8) was a problem related to prime numbers and included the
proof of the famous Riemann hypothesis. This is the most important
mathematical conjecture not yet solved today, since as Riemann himself
had shown, some of the properties of the zeta function that appears in the
formulation of its conjecture have important implications on the
distribution of prime numbers. Finally, the third problem on number
theory discussed in Paris (problem no. 13) asked for a proof of the
impossibility of the solution of septic equations by means of functions of
two variables.
It must be said, however, that the problems on number theory not
discussed by Hilbert at the Paris conference were at least as important as
those proposed by Hilbert before his auditorium and would determine a
large part of the research on number theory carried out in the 20th century.
Thus, for example, problem no. 9 asked for a general law of reciprocity for
any field of numbers, which would be formulated by Emil Artin in 1928
and would lead to the theory of Abelian class fields. This was precisely the
topic of problem no. 12, which asked for the extension of Kronecker’s
theorem about Abelian fields to any algebraic domain of rationality. A
case apart is problem no. 10, which asks for the determination of the
solvability of a given Diophantine equation with integer coefficients, since
by the nature of the problem and methods employed by its solution it
could also be placed between the foundational problems.
The next problem discussed by Hilbert in Paris (problem no. 16) was
extracted from the work of the French mathematician Maurice d’Ocagne
(1862-1938) and asked for the form of curves and surfaces defined by
polynomial equations. This was the only problem belonging to the
miscellaneous block of algebraic and geometrical problems (problems 13
to 18) presented by Hilbert to his auditorium. As remarked by J. J. Gray,

10
This is the topic of Corry 2004.
110 Chapter Eleven
The run of Problems from 13 to 18 is the least coherent block. Hilbert’s

touch was less sure here, and the influence of these Problems on the later
development of mathematics has been less substantial.11
This was not the case of the final group of problems, with which “Hilbert
was on surer ground.”12 To this block belonged the last three problems
presented by Hilbert to his auditorium, each of which referred to central
questions of the mathematics of his time and of all the 20th century. The
first problem, number 19, asked to determine if a concrete type of
problems in the calculus of variations (the regular problems, which are
those that usually arise when the calculus of variations is used to solve
certain physical problems) always have solutions which are expressible in
terms of analytic functions, namely, as functions given locally by a series
of convergent powers.
The second problem, number 21, was referred to a type of linear
differential equations of ݊-th order that Lazarus Fuchs had studied first,
and then Klein and Poincaré. As Hilbert explained, Klein had exploited the
fact that from these differential equations a group can be obtained. The
problem was then to show that, given a group, a differential equation can
be found that has the given group as its corresponding group.
The last problem discussed by Hilbert, number 22, was probably
chosen as homage to Poincaré. As Hilbert pointed out, Poincaré was the
first to demonstrate that it is possible to standardize (that is, to represent
parametrically) any algebraic relation between two variables thanks to the
automorphic functions of one variable. Poincaré himself generalized this
fundamental theorem for any non-algebraic analytical relation between
two variables. The problem raised by Hilbert was then to find out if the
resolving functions could be determined in such a way that they fulfilled
certain additional conditions.
Hilbert’s lecture did not impress his audience, which triggered a brief
and disperse discussion on some of the topics dealt with in the lecture. It
was commented, for example, that more progress had been made on the
problem extracted from Ocagne’s work than that suggested by Hilbert.
One of the illustrious attendees at the conference, Giuseppe Peano, leader
of the Italian formalist school, said that his colleague Alessandro Padoa
(1868-1937) had solved the problem of axiomatizing arithmetic and would
make a report on the subject in the Congress.

11
Gray 2000, 72-73.
12
Ibid.
Hilbert Problems (1900)
Asterisks denote the ten problems presented during the Paris lecture
1.* Cantor’s problem of the cardinal number of the continuum

(continuum hypothesis).
2.* The compatibility of the arithmetical axioms.
3. The equality of the volumes of two tetrahedra with equal bases and
equal altitudes.
4. The problem of the straight line as the shortest distance between two
points (alternative geometries).
5. Lie’s concept of a continuous group of transformations, without the
assumption of the differentiability of the functions defining the group.
6.* A mathematical treatment of the axioms of physics.
7.* The irrationality and transcendence of certain numbers.
8. * Problems of prime numbers (including the Riemann hypothesis).
9. A proof of the most general law of reciprocity in any number field.
10. The determination of the solvability of a Diophantine equation.
11. Quadratic forms with any algebraic numerical coefficients.
12. The extension of Kronecker’s theorem on Abelian fields to any
algebraic realm of rationality.
13.* A proof of the impossibility of solving any equation of the 7th
degree by means of functions of only two arguments.
14. A proof of the finiteness of certain complete systems of functions.
15. A rigorous foundation for Schubert’s enumerative calculus.
16.* The problem of the topology of algebraic curves and surfaces.
17. The expression of definite forms by squares.
18. The building-up of space from congruent polyhedra (n-dimensional
crystallography, groups, etc.).
19.* Determining whether the solutions of regular problems in the
calculus of variations are necessarily analytic.
20. The general problem of boundary values (variational problems).
21.* A proof of the existence of linear differential equations with a
prescribed monodromic group.
22.* The uniformisation of analytic relations by means of automorphic
functions.
23. Further development of the methods of the calculus of variations.
112 Chapter Eleven
Despite Hilbert’s conference drawing a mixed reception from the

attendees, it became a great success as Minkowski had predicted, being
quickly published in Germany and translated into French and English. In
fact, Hilbert’s problems did not take long to attract young mathematicians
around the world to try to unveil the future of mathematics, solving the
problems posed by Hilbert. Thus, for example, the Russian mathematician
Sergei Bernstein (1880-1968) travelled from Paris to Göttingen in 1904 to
present to Hilbert his proof that, under the conditions prescribed by
Hilbert, elliptical differential equations have analytical solutions (problem
no. 19).
CHAPTER TWELVE
FROM INTEGRAL EQUATIONS

TO HILBERT SPACES
After Paris, Hilbert resumed his usual academic activity at the University
of Göttingen. A quick look at the titles of the courses offered by Hilbert
between 1900 and 1904 shows us that they dealt with a wide range of
topics, which included those that had focused his interest before Paris
(algebra, geometry and number theory), those that occupied the centre of
his research at that moment (differential and integral calculus, function
theory, potential theory and calculus of variations), and those that would
do so in the immediate future (particularly, mechanics).
Among all these issues, there is no doubt that the one that focused most
of his intellectual efforts during those years was that of integral equations
(those equations in which in the integrand appears an unknown function to
be determined). At the end of the 19th century there was an increasing
interest in the study of integral equations, mainly due to their connections
with some of the differential equations of mathematical physics. From
these investigations, the four forms of integral equations, called today
Volterra and Fredholm equations of first and second kind, arose.
We owe the first rigorous treatment of what we might call a general
theory of integral equations to the Swedish astronomer and mathematician
Erik Ivar Fredholm (1866-1927), who published his research on the topic
in a series of articles published between 1900 and 1903. The research of
Fredholm had a profound impact and attracted the attention of Hilbert,
who decided to dedicate the seminar of the winter semester of 1900/01 to
the study of the integral equations. There, the Swedish mathematician Erik
Holmgren (1872/3-1943) explained to Hilbert and the other participants in
the seminar the research on integral equations carried out by his fellow
Fredholm.
In his work, Fredholm presented the solution of the Fredholm equations
of the second kind, named for him, in an original and elegant way that
revealed a certain analogy between the integral equations and the linear
equations of algebra, which led him to develop a theory of determinants for
114 Chapter Twelve
Fredholm and Hilbert about integral equations
An integral equation is an equation that contains a function ݂ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ and

integrals over this function that must be solved for ݂ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻǤ If the limits of
the integral are fixed, then the integral equation is called a Fredholm
integral equation. If a limit is variable, is called a Volterra integral
equation. If the unknown function only appears under the sign of
integration, the equation is called of the “first kind.” If the function is
inside and outside the integration sign, the equation is called of the
“second kind.” A Fredholm equation of the first kind is thus an integral
equation of the form
௕
݃ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ൌ න ‫ܭ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ǡ ‫ݕ‬ሻ݂ሺ‫ݕ‬ሻ݀‫ݕ‬ǡ
௔
where ݂ is the function to be solved, and ܽǡ ܾǡ ݃ and ‫ ܭ‬are known
(‫ܭ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ǡ ‫ݕ‬ሻ is called the kernel of the integral). A Fredholm equation of
the second kind is an integral equation of the form
௕
݃ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ൌ ݂ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ െ න ‫ܭ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ǡ ‫ݕ‬ሻ݂ሺ‫ݕ‬ሻ݀‫ݕ‬Ǥ
௔
A Volterra equation of the first kind is an integral equation of the form
௫
݃ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ൌ න ‫ܭ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ǡ ‫ݕ‬ሻ݂ሺ‫ݕ‬ሻ݀‫ݕ‬Ǥ
௔
A Volterra equation of the second kind is an integral equation of de
form
௫
݃ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ൌ ݂ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ െ න ‫ܭ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ǡ ‫ݕ‬ሻ݂ሺ‫ݕ‬ሻ݀‫ݕ‬Ǥ
௔
An integral equation is called homogeneous if ݃ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ൌ Ͳ. Clearly, not
all the equations belong to one of the previous forms. For example,
Dickman function
ఈ
‫ݕ‬ ݀‫ݕ‬
‫ܨ‬ሺߙሻ ൌ න ‫ ܨ‬൬ ൰ ǡ
଴ ͳെ‫ݕ ݕ‬
is very similar to a homogeneous Volterra equation of the second kind,
but is not of this type, as the integrand is of the form ‫ܨ‬൫݂ሺ‫ݕ‬ሻ൯, not of
the form ‫ܨ‬ሺ‫ݕ‬ሻ.
In his articles Fredholm studied integral equations of the second
kind with a complex parameter ߣ:
௕
݃ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ൌ ݂ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ െ ߣ න ‫ܭ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ǡ ‫ݕ‬ሻ݂ሺ‫ݕ‬ሻ݀‫ݕ‬Ǥ
௔
Fredholm then defined a determinant ‫ܦ‬௞ ሺߣሻ associated with the kernel

cont. p. 115
From Integral Equations to Hilbert Spaces 115
ߣ‫ ܭ‬and showed that ‫ܦ‬௞ ሺߣሻ is an integer function (a function defined on

the whole complex plane and holomorphic at each point) of ߣ. The
roots of the equation ‫ܦ‬௞ ሺߣሻ = 0 are called eigenvalues, and the
solutions corresponding to the homogeneous equation ݃ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ൌ Ͳ are
called the eigenfunctions of the equation. Fredholm also showed that
ifߣ is not an eigenvalue, then the integral equation can be solved or
“inverted” by putting
௕
݂ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ൌ ݃ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ െ ߣ න ܵሺ‫ݔ‬ǡ ‫ݕ‬ሻ݃ሺ‫ݕ‬ሻ݀‫ݕ‬ǡ
௔
where S is called the kernel or solving function and is given as the ratio
of the determinants–as in Cramer´s rules. This shows how much
Fredholm was inspired by the theory of linear equations.
Following Fredholm, Hilbert considered a system of equations of
finite dimension, but with the addition of a complex parameter Ȝ:
௡
݂௜ െ ߣ ෍ ݇௜ǡ௝ ݂௝ ൌ ݃௜ ሺ݅ ൌ ͳǡʹǡ ǥ ǡ ݊ሻǤ

௝ୀଵ
Instead of giving the solution and verifying it as Fredholm had done,
Hilbert made the step to the limit rigorous. In doing so, he was able to
demonstrate in his theory of integration a series of results analogous to
those of the theory of linear equations. In this sense, we could say that
Hilbert treated integral equations as if they were linear equations and,
as it has been said sometimes, began the algebraization of analysis.
Hilbert turned the previous system into a system of bilinear forms.
Introducing the notation
௡
ሺ‫ݔ‬ǡ ‫ݕ‬ሻ ൌ ෍ ‫ݔ‬௜ ‫ݕ‬௜ ǡ

௜ୀଵ
for the internal product of two vectors x and y, the system of equations
݂ െ ߣ‫ ݂ܭ‬ൌ ݃
is written as
ሺ‫ݑ‬ǡ ݂ሻ െ ߣሺ‫ݑ‬ǡ ‫݂ܭ‬ሻ ൌ ሺ‫ݑ‬ǡ ݃ሻǡ
where the vector f is considered a solution if the above equation is
satisfied for every vector u. Hilbert then solves the system ݂ െ ߣ‫ ݂ܭ‬ൌ
݃ in a similar way to what Fredholm had done but going a step further.
In the case in which the kernel is symmetric, that is, when ‫ܭ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ǡ ‫ݕ‬ሻ ൌ
‫ܭ‬ሺ‫ݕ‬ǡ ‫ݔ‬ሻ, Hilbert was able to develop a more complete theory than
Fredholm’s one. In particular, he established an analogy between the
cont. p. 116
116 Chapter Twelve
bilinear form
௡ ௡
‫ܭ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ǡ ‫ݕ‬ሻ ൌ ෍ ෍ ݇௜ǡ௝ ‫ݔ‬௜ ‫ݕ‬௝

௜ୀଵ ௝ୀଵ
and the integral
௕ ௕
න න ‫ܭ‬ሺ‫ݏ‬ǡ ‫ݐ‬ሻ ‫ݔ‬ሺ‫ݏ‬ሻ‫ݕ‬ሺ‫ݐ‬ሻ݀‫ݐ݀ݏ‬Ǥ
௔ ௔
In this case, it is demonstrated that the eigenvalues of the integral
equation are a succession of real numbers ሺߣ௡ ሻ and the eigenfunctions
corresponding to the different eigenvalues are orthogonal. With this
notation we can enunciate, as an example of the scope of the theory,
one of the most important results achieved by Hilbert and his disciple
and collaborator Erhard Schmidt (1876-1959):
Theorem of Hilbert-Schmidt: If ݂ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ satisfies

௕
݂ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ൌ න ‫ܭ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ǡ ‫ݕ‬ሻ ݃ሺ‫ݕ‬ሻ݀‫ݕ‬
௔
for a continuous function ݂ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ, then ݂ ൌ σ௡ ܿ௡ ߮௡ , where ሺ߮௡ ሻ
are the orthonormal eigenfunctions for K and
௕
ܿ௡ ൌ න ߮௡ ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ݂ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ݀‫ݔ‬Ǥ
௔
(We can see here the connexion with Fourier series: a series written in
terms of orthogonal eigenfunctions is called a Fourier series).
integral equations. Hilbert immediately saw the possibility to achieve his

goal of a unitary approach in analysis more easily through this way than
through the calculus of variations in which he was working. In this sense,
the influence of Fredholm on Hilbert is evident, although Hilbert was not
so worried about the resolution of the integral equations as in the
construction of a general theory of integral equations.
Although some results of Fredholm and Hilbert had been anticipated in
some cases–particularly by Carl Neumann and Henri Poincaré–, they were
the first to deal with the study of integral equations in all their generality,
regardless of their applications. During the semester of winter of 1901/02,
Hilbert gave a course on potential theory, using the first results obtained in
his study of integral equations. From then on, Hilbert would only speak
about integral equations to his students. Although the topic of the

discussions had changed, the weekly walk with the members of the
seminar continued.
Hilbert was already, at only forty years old, a famous mathematician;
he had been elected a member of several foreign academies and the
German government had awarded him the title of Geheimrat–knight. It
was an acknowledgment of the lengthy list of impressive achievements by
Hilbert: his important theorems in the theory of invariants, his
contributions and systematization of number theory carried out in the
Zahlbericht, his influential and widely published book on the foundations
of geometry, the list of problems presented in Paris that unveiled the future
of mathematics, his results on the calculus of variations, the restitution of
the Dirichlet principle, etc. The years in which Hilbert taught his lessons
on analytic functions for only one person, Professor Franklin, were far
away. Then, hundreds of students attended his classes, some had to sit on
the windowsills to be able to listen to the most famous mathematician in
Germany and, together with Poincaré, the world.
Then, shortly after his fortieth birthday, Hilbert again had the
opportunity to leave Göttingen. Lazarus Fuchs had died and Hilbert was
offered his chair of mathematics at the University of Berlin. But Hilbert
not only did not leave Göttingen, but he kindly asked Althoff, with the
approval and support of Klein and as a compensation for his remaining in
Göttingen, to create a new chair of mathematics at Göttingen and that this
position should be offered to his old friend Minkowski. And so it was:
Minkowski arrived at Göttingen in the summer semester of 1902, thus
beginning a period of six uninterrupted years of joint work with Hilbert.
Now, instead of the seminar with Klein, Hilbert would run it with
Minkowski.
Two years later an 18-year-old student named Hermann Weyl, who
would become one of Hilbert’s most brilliant disciples and collaborators,
and his successor in Göttingen from 1930 to 1933, arrived in Göttingen.
Weyl was particularly captivated by Hilbert’s Zahlberitcht and resolved to
study everything he had written. He presented his doctoral dissertation in
1908 under Hilbert’s supervision, in which he explored singular integral
equations with special consideration of Fourier integral theorems. After his
habilitation in 1910, he became a Privatdozent and was thereby entitled to
lecture at the University of Göttingen. Almost all of Weyl’s publications
during his stay in Göttingen until 1913 dealt with integral equations and
their applications. He left Göttingen in 1913, when he was offered a
professorship at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zürich,
where he lectured until 1930.
118 Chapter Twelve
The same year of Weyl’s arrival, on the initiative of Klein, Carl Runge
received a call from the University of Göttingen to occupy a chair of
applied mathematics. He took up the post in October of that year and held
it until his retirement in 1925. After Runge’s appointment, Göttingen
became the only German university with four full professors of
mathematics (Klein, Hilbert, Minkowski and Runge). The cooperation
among all four manifested itself in the weekly walk, “every Thursday at
three o’clock,” during which they talked a little of everything:
mathematics (and the neighbouring sciences: astronomy, mechanics and
physics), academic organizational tasks and the practice of sport! (see also
Chapter 6). It was during these years that the “Hilbert School” (in
Blumenthal’s expression) reached its maximum splendour.
Between 1901 and 1914, Hilbert supervised more than 40 doctoral
theses, some of them of lasting value and veritable landmarks in 20th
century mathematics. Those included, but are not limited to, those of Earle
Raymond Hedrick (1901), Georg Hamel (1901), Oliver Kellogg (1902).
Rudolf Fueter (1903), Charles Mason (1903), Teiji Takagi (1903), Sergei
Bernstein (1904), Erhard Schmidt (1905), Ernst Hellinger (1907),
Hermann Weyl (1908), Andreas Speiser (1909), Alfred Haar (1909),
Richard Courant (1910), Erich Hecke (1910), Kurt Grelling (1910), Hugo
Steinhaus (1911), and Hans Bolza (1913). During those years, many
students and researchers from inside and outside of Germany went to
Göttingen to study or collaborate with Hilbert and to share their valuable
contributions with the Göttingen scientific community. Many of them
remained afterwards as professors in Göttingen or went to other
universities, becoming in most cases reputed mathematicians or scientists.
In March 1904 the first in a series of five articles by Hilbert, published
between 1904 and 1906, on integral equations finally appeared; a sixth
article appeared a little later, in 1910. These articles, which would be later
included in the work Grundzüge einer allgemeinen Theorie der linearen
Integralgleichungen (Elements of a general theory of linear integral
equations), published in 1912, are among the most influential papers
published in modern times and constitute the starting point of modern or
abstract functional analysis. Hilbert himself would explain in the first of
the articles mentioned that:
The systematic development of a general theory of linear integral equations
is of utmost importance for analysis as a whole, in particular for the theory
of definite integrals and the theory of the expansion of arbitrary functions
in infinite series, furthermore for the theory of linear differential equations
and analytic functions as well for potential theory and the calculus of
variations. I intend to treat in this book the question of solving integral
equations, and, above all, to explore the interrelations and general

properties of their solutions.1
That Hilbert considered his methods as a logical extension of finite-

dimensional techniques is clear, both for internal evidence and for his own
affirmations. “The method,” said Hilbert, “is to begin with an algebraic
problem, namely the problem of orthogonal transformations of quadratic
forms in ݊ variables in a sum of squares, and by rigorous passage to the
limit for ݊ ൌ λ, to successfully solve the transcendental problem
considered.”2 This method led Hilbert and his collaborators to the
consideration and abstract study of the space κଶ of square summable
sequences of real or complex numbers, that is, of the space consisting of
all the infinite sequences ሼǥ ǡ ܿିଶ ǡ ܿିଵ ǡ ܿ଴ ǡ ܿଵ ǡ ܿଶ ǡ ǥ ሽ, ܿ௞ ‫ॶ א‬, where
ॶ ൌ Թॶ ൌ ԧ, for which
ஶ
෍ ȁܿ௞ ȁଶ ൏ λǤ
௞ୀିஶ
In 1906, the same year in which Hilbert’s influential papers were
published, the doctoral thesis of Maurice Fréchet (1878-1973) Sur
quelques points du calcul fonctionnel (On some points of the functional
calculus), which had a tremendous influence, both for the development of
Functional Analysis and for Topology, also appeared. In this thesis,
Fréchet introduced the abstract notions of distance and metric space,
although this term was coined later by Felix Hausdorff (1868-1942),
which allowed him to extend the usual notions of neighbourhood, limits,
continuity, etc. to abstract sets. Fréchet also introduced the notions of
compactness, completeness and separability and studied them in different
infinite-dimension functional spaces showing the importance of these
properties for their characterization.
Fréchet’s topological ideas spread quickly. It is not strange, then, that
they were applied in the context of the work on integral equations
developed by Fredholm and Hilbert. Thus, as early as 1907, Erhard
Schmidt would simplify and extend the results of Fredholm and Hilbert,
but from a completely different point of view. Schmidt was the first to
define κଶ as a space of infinite dimension, thinking about the sequences
(ܿ௞ ) as points in this space and studying the geometry of κଶ as a function
space in the modern sense of the term–using to this effect the language of
norms, linearity, subspaces and orthogonal projection. Schmidt’s
conceptual simplifications were immediately incorporated by Ernst Hellinger

1
Hilbert 1912, 2.
2
Ibid., 3.
120 Chapter Twelve
Functional Analysis and Spectral Theory
Rather loosely we could say that the object of study of functional

analysis is that of a “function space,” that is, a topological space, the
points of which are functions. Many such spaces are vectors spaces
which have a metric often defined in terms of a norm which yields a
distance between any points in the spaces. Indeed, every normed vector
space has a topological structure: the norm induces a metric and the
metric induces a topology. Hence, paraphrasing Dieudonné (1981, 1),
we can define functional analysis as “the study of topological vector
spaces and of mappings defined between subsets of such spaces, these
mapping being assumed to satisfy various algebraic and topological
conditions”. Well known examples of topological vector spaces are
Hilbert spaces and Banach spaces.
The definition above is wide enough to include the main topics
dealt with in functional analysis: Hilbert spaces and the spectral theory
of operators, the theory of normed linear spaces, the theory of Banach
algebras and operator algebras (C*-algebras and von Neumann
algebras), the general theory of topological vector spaces, generalized
functions (distributions), and the theory of partial differential
equations. The fundamental concepts and methods of functional
analysis arose from diverse sources: the calculus of variations, the
theory of integral equations, set theory and topology, and linear and
abstract algebra. Indeed, as remarked by Dieudonné, functional
analysis is “a rather complex blend of Algebra and Topology, and it
should therefore surprise no one that the development of these two
branches of mathematics had a strong influence on its own evolution”
(Ibid).
Besides Hilbert spaces (and intimately related to it), the topic in
Functional Analysis in which the influence of Hilbert has been greater
is spectral theory. This can be defined as the study of the spectra of
linear operators and related properties. The spectrum (pl. spectra) of a
linear operator ܶ on a complex Banach space ܺ is the set ߪሺܶሻ of
complex numbers ߣ for which the operator ߣ‫ ܫ‬െ ܶ is not invertible
(i.e., it does not have a defined bounded inverse everywhere), where ‫ܫ‬
is the identity operator on ܺ. Hilbert’s pioneer contributions to spectral
theory stem from his work on integral equations and are on the basis of
the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics.
(1883-1950) and Hermann Weyl in their 1907 and 1908 dissertations

under Hilbert.
Fréchet’s and Schmidt topological and geometrical characterization of

function spaces had a great influence in two young mathematicians
Frigyes Riesz (1880-1956) and Ernst Fischer (1875-1954), who proved
independently that the space ‫ܮ‬ଶ of square Lebesgue integrable functions is
a complete metric space. In fact, the first to use the term Hilbert space (or,
rather, espace de Hilbert) was Riesz in his book of 1913 on systems of
equations in infinitely many unknowns. However, it was not until 1929
that John von Neumann (1903-1957), another disciple and collaborator of
Hilbert in the 1920s, defined the abstract concept of Hilbert space
rigorously and formulated the mathematical structure of quantum
mechanics in the language of the theory of Hilbert spaces.
Before von Neumann, the term Hilbert space had been applied
principally to the space κଶ of square summable sequences or to the space
‫ܮ‬ଶ of Lebesgue square integrable functions which Riesz had proved to be
isomorphic to κଶ . The essential properties of these spaces were those of a
vector space with an inner product which was complete and separable (i.e.,
which had a countable dense subset). Von Neumann then defined an
abstract Hilbert space axiomatically as any separable, complete inner
product space. He also defined a general linear operator on a Hilbert
space as a linear transformation defined on some of its subsets, which
enabled him to express the transformations of quantum mechanics in terms
of operators on a Hilbert space.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
PARADOXES IN GÖTTINGEN
In 1897 Ernst Zermelo arrived in Göttingen. He had studied at the

universities of Berlin, Halle and Freiburg, and finished his doctorate in
1894 at the University of Berlin with a dissertation on the calculus of
variations. He remained there until 1897, when he moved to the University
of Göttingen. Two years later Zermelo completed his Habilitationschrift
on hydrodynamics, which he had already began with Max Planck (1858-
1947) in Berlin. He delivered his habilitation thesis at the University of
Göttingen on 4 March, 1899, which allowed him to become a privatdozent
at that University, where he remained until 1910. Despite his early
underpinnings in the calculus of variations and hydrodynamics, the
reading of the work of Cantor and the influence of Hilbert changed
Zermelo’s research interests to set theory and the foundations of
mathematics, two areas in which he became a close collaborator of
Hilbert.
The same year as the arrival of Zermelo in Göttingen the first work on
mathematics of a young English aristocrat who had studied philosophy and
mathematics at Cambridge, entitled An Essay on the Foundations of
Geometry, appeared. Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872-1970), third
count of Russell and future Nobel prize of Literature, would play an
outstanding role in the genesis of the so-called crisis of foundations
(Grundlagenkrisis) of mathematics that would explode at the beginning of
the 20th century.
In 1901 Russell had begun writing about how it was possible to derive
mathematics from the symbolic language of Peano, which he had extended
to encompass the logic of relations that same year. This led Russell to
examine Cantor’s proof that the cardinal of any set ܽ is smaller than the
cardinal of its power set ࣪ሺܽሻ, or what amounts to the same, that there is
no greater cardinal (Cantor’s theorem). The problem with this result was
that it seemed to contradict the Russellian hypothesis of the existence of a
universal class, which would have to be expected to have the greatest
cardinal (this is the so-called Cantor’s paradox). It was precisely the
application to the universal class of the diagonal argument, used by Cantor
124 Chapter Thirteen
in the proof of the theorem that bears his name, that led Russell to the
discovery of the paradox of the class of all classes that do not belong to
themselves, the so-called Russell’s paradox.
Russell communicated his famous paradox to Frege in a letter dated
July 16, 1902. It was first published in the work by Russell, The Principles
of Mathematics, which appeared the following year. Almost at the same
time, Frege referred to the paradox in an appendix to the second volume of
his work Grundgesetze der Arithmetik (The Basic Laws of Arithmetic)
(1903), recognizing that the logical system shown there, on which he
wanted to base all mathematics, was inconsistent. Frege sent a copy of this
volume to Hilbert, who replied that he already knew this paradox and that
he believed that “Dr. Zermelo had discovered it three or four years
before.”1 Hilbert also added that “I had already found more convincing
contradictions four or five years earlier, which led me to the conviction
that traditional logic is inadequate and that the theory of concept formation
needs to be profiled and refined.”2
In fact, Hilbert’s first contact with paradoxes goes back to his
correspondence with Cantor between 1897 and 1900. According to
Hilbert’s opinion, Cantor’s paradox and other paradoxes (the paradox of
Zermelo-Russell and another mathematical paradox discovered by Hilbert
himself) could be solved by applying the axiomatic method, because in an
axiomatic theory only those concepts that can be deduced from a finite
base of axioms are accepted and so the problem is then to postulate a
sufficient group of axioms that does not lead to contradictions.
The Zermelo-Russell paradox showed that both Frege’s logical system
and the naive set theory developed by Cantor and Dedekind were
inconsistent and that, therefore, that it was necessary to find an
axiomatization of logic and set theory that could prevent the emergence of
paradoxes and to ensure once and for all the consistency of both
disciplines. This was not a minor problem, since for many mathematicians
of the time these two disciplines constituted the foundation of mathematics
as a whole and, therefore, the consistency of all branches of mathematics
(for example, of geometry or analysis) depended on the consistency of
logic and set theory.
The prominent place occupied by both disciplines in the late
nineteenth century was to a large extent the logical consequence of the
progressive rigorization of analysis that had taken place in the 18th and
19th centuries, to which mathematicians such as Cauchy, Bernard Bolzano

1
For this reason Russell’s paradox is also known as the Zermelo-Russell paradox.
2
Frege 1976, 79-80.
Paradoxes in Göttingen 125
(1781-1848), Riemann and Weierstrass, among others, had contributed

decisively. This process had been inextricably linked to the progressive
abandonment of the resource of spatial or temporal intuition that had
dominated the infinitesimal calculus since its very creation by Isaac
Newton (1642/43-1727) and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716). The
discovery of non-Euclidean geometries, which made the Euclidean space
lose the privileged place that had been granted until then as the ultimate
source of mathematical intuition, contributed decisively to this
abandonment.
Because of this, the traditional definition of real numbers as continuous
magnitudes of Euclidean geometry intuitively grasped was replaced by
arithmetical definitions in which they were defined from sequences or
infinite sets of rational numbers and, ultimately, from natural numbers.
This process of arithmetization of analysis naturally left the door open to
the question: to what are the natural numbers reducible? And the answer
was not long in coming, since for Cantor and Dedekind the natural
numbers (and from them, the rest of numbers) were reducible to sets,
whereas for Frege they were reducible to concepts. Thus, with the
publication by these mathematicians of the works on the foundations of
mathematics, a new era was opened in the progressive rigorization of
analysis that led, on the one hand, to the birth of set theory in the work of
Cantor and Dedekind, and, on the other, to a radical refunding of logic in
the work of Frege.
Both in the correspondence with Frege and in his 1903 book, Russell
had indeed formulated his paradox indistinctly in intensional terms–that is,
as the paradox that arises when considering the predicates that cannot be
predicated of themselves–, and in extensional terms–that is, as the paradox
that emerges when considering the class of all classes that are not
members of themselves. This fact, along with the conviction of Frege and
Russell that to avoid the paradox it was necessary to reformulate the
logical system–to which they intend to reduce the theory of classes and the
entire mathematics–, put logic in the centre of attention.
Thus, the publication of Russell’s paradox could not go unnoticed by
Hilbert and his group of collaborators in Göttingen, because it made it
clear that logic (and not just set theory) was inconsistent. In this sense,
Russell’s paradox questioned Hilbert’s axiomatic program and caused an
important revision of it, since its core was the proof of the consistency of
the axioms of arithmetic by means of the usual methods of logic and
mathematics, and so required logic to be free of contradictions. Thus, if
before 1903 Hilbert believed it was possible to solve or avoid paradoxes
by means of an axiomatic reformulation of set theory, from now on it
seemed also necessary an axiomatization of logic that avoided

contradictions.
Fig 13-1 Ernst Zermelo in the 1900s
Hilbert entrusted the task of axiomatization of logic and set theory to

Zermelo, who presented his famous axiomatization of set theory in the
paper “Untersuchungen über die Grundlagen der Mengenlehre I”

(“Investigations in the foundations of set theory I”) (1908). Besides the
axioms of choice (Axiom VI) and of infinite (Axiom VII), the most
intriguing axiom presented by Zermelo is the axiom of separation (Axiom
III), since it is in virtue of it that it is possible to avoid Russell’s paradox
and the paradoxes of transfinite numbers. As Zermelo himself explains,
this axiom is a substitute for the Cantorian definition of set or, more
precisely, for the principle of comprehension, which he sees as a
specification of that definition. According to this principle, it is assumed
that to every logically expressible property there corresponds a set. But
according to the axiom of separation “no one ever has the right to define
sets independently, but only as subsets obtained by separation from sets
already given and so contradictory constructions such as “the set of all
sets” or “the set of all ordinal numbers” [...] are eliminated.”3
For example, Russell’s paradox arises when considering the property
“set that is not an element of itself.” Under the assumption of the principle
of comprehension, the previous property determines the set ‫ ݓ‬of all sets ‫ݔ‬
such that ‫ݔ ב ݔ‬, from which Russell derived that ‫ ݓ א ݓ‬՞ ‫ݓ ב ݓ‬. One
way to eliminate this contradiction, proposed by Russell in 1905, would be
to limit the size of what is called a set, so preventing the formation of sets
too large such as the set of all sets having any given property. This is
indeed the basic idea of Zermelo’s axiom of separation, which limits the
cases where a set can be associated to a property to those in which the
elements that have this property already belong to a previously given set,
so that you can only get a subset of this set and thus Russell’s paradox is
blocked.
Although Zermelo’s set theory blocks the appearance of Russell’s
paradox and the transfinite paradoxes such as Burali-Forti’s or Cantor’s
paradox, it cannot prove its own consistency as would be desirable for
the completion of Hilbert’s program of proving the consistency of
mathematics. Indeed, as we know today by Gödel’s second
incompleteness theorem, this is impossible. On the other hand, the
axiomatization of logic constituted a problem that presented
inextricable difficulties for Zermelo and Hilbert. Hence the publication
in 1910 of the first volume of the work of Alfred North Whitehead
(1861-1947) and Bertrand Russell Principia Mathematica (1910-1913),
in which an axiomatization of logic that avoided logical paradoxes
appeared for the first time, could be described some years later by
Hilbert as “the crowning achievement of the work of axiomatization as a

3
Zermelo 1908, 263.
The axiomatization of set theory (“Untersuchungen über

die Grundlagen der Mengenlehre,” 1908)
Def. 1. Set theory is concerned with a domain ी of objects, which we

will call simply things (Dinge) and among which the “sets” constitute a
part. If two symbols ܽ and ܾ designate the same thing, we write ܽ ൌ ܾ,
otherwise ܽ ് ܾ. We say that a thing ܽ “exists” if it belongs to the
domain ी; likewise, we say of a class ॆ of things that “there exist
things of the class ॆ,” if ी contains at least one individual of this class.
Def. 2. There are, among the things of domain ी, certain “fundamental
relations” of the form ܽ ‫ܾ א‬. If for two things ܽ and ܾ, the relation
ܽ ‫ ܾ א‬holds, it is said that “ܽ is an element of the set ܾ” or that “ܾ
contains ܽ as an element” or that “ܾ possesses the element ܽ.” A thing
ܾ that contains another thing ܽ as an element, can always be called a
set, and only in this case–with one exception (axiom II).
Def. 3. If every element ‫ ݔ‬of a set ‫ ܯ‬is also an element of the set ܰ, so
that from ‫ ܯ א ݔ‬it always follows that ‫ܰ א ݔ‬, then we say that “‫ ܯ‬is a
subset of ܰ” and we write ‫ܰ ؿ ܯ‬. It is always assumed that ‫ܯ ؿ ܯ‬
and that from‫ ܰ ؿ ܯ‬and ܰ ‫ ܴ ؿ‬it always follows that‫ܴ ؿ ܯ‬.
Def. 4. A question or statement ू is called definite if the fundamental
relations of the domain, with the help of the axioms and the universally
valid laws of logic, enable one to decide, without any arbitrariness, its
validity or invalidity. Similarly, a class-statement (Klassenaussage)
ूሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ, in which the variable ‫ ݔ‬ranges over all individuals of a class ॆ,
will be called “definite” if it is definite for each single individual of the
class ॆ.
Ax. I. If every element of a set ‫ ܯ‬is also an element of ܰ and vice
versa; if, therefore, ‫ ܰ ؿ ܯ‬and ܰ ‫ ܯ ؿ‬, then always ‫ ܯ‬ൌ ܰ. Or,
more briefly: every set is determined by its elements. (Axiom of
determination).
Ax. II. There is an (improper) set, the null set Ͳ, that contains no
element at all. If ܽ is any one thing of the domain, there exists a set ሼܽሽ
containing ܽ and only ܽ as an element; if ܽ and ܾ are any two things in
the domain, there exists always a set ሼܽǡ ܾሽ containing ܽ and ܾ as
elements, and no other thing ‫ ݔ‬different from both. (Axiom of
elementary sets).
Ax. III. If the class-statementूሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ is definite for all the elements of
a set ‫ܯ‬, ‫ ܯ‬always has a subset‫ ूܯ‬containing all the elements ‫ ݔ‬of M
for which ूሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ is true, and only such elements. (Axiom of separation)
Ax. IV. To every set ܶthere corresponds another set ॏܶ (the power set
of T) that contains all the subsets of ܶ and only these. (Axiom of the
power set).
Ax. V. To every set ܶ there corresponds a set्ܶ (the union set of ܶ)
that contains as elements all the elements of ܶ and only these. (Axiom
of the union).
Ax. VI. If ܶ is a set whose elements are all sets different from Ͳ and
mutually disjoint, its unionՁܶ contains at least one subset ܵଵ having
one and only one element in common with each element of ܶ. (Axiom
of choice).
Ax. VII. The domain contains at least one set ܼ that contains the null
set as an element and is so constituted that to each of its elements ܽ
there corresponds a further element of the form ሼܽሽǡ that is to say, that
for each of its elements ܽ it also contains the corresponding set ሼܽሽ as
an element. (Axiom of infinity).
To this set of axioms, two more were added later: the replacement
axiom scheme and the axiom of foundation. The replacement axiom
scheme, proposed independently by Thoralf Skolem (1887-1963) and
A. Fraenkel in 1922, allows the construction of the series of ordinals.
The axiom of foundation, adopted by J. von Neumann in 1925 and by
Zermelo in 1930, restricts the category of sets so that we can better
capture the sets commonly used in mathematics. The theory obtained
by adding these two axioms to axioms I-VII is commonly referred to in
the literature as Zermelo-Fraenkel set-theory with the axiom of choice
(ZFC).
whole.”4 Meanwhile, life continued in Göttingen. Between 1890 and 1914

the number of Privatdozenten of mathematics at the University of
Göttingen was impressive and included such prominent names as
Hermann Weyl, Arnold Sommerfeld (1868-1951), Constantin
Carathéodory (1873-1950), Gustav Herglotz (1881-1953), Erich Hecke,
Max Born (1882-1970), Richard Courant (1888-1972), Theodor von
Kármán (1881-1963), Otto Blumenthal, Ernst Zermelo, Paul Koebe (1882-
1945), Robert Fricke (1861-1930) and Otto Toeplitz (1881-1940).

4
Hilbert 1965, vol. 3, 153 (Ewald 1996, vol. 2, 1113).
As the university grew in number of students, teaching staff and

prestige, new research institutes were created in fields such as physics,
applied mathematics, electronics and geophysics. All of them worked in
close collaboration with the staff of mathematics professors, among other
things because they were subsidized and equipped by the Göttingen
Association for the Promotion of Applied Physics, a consortium of
industrialists and scientists created by Klein in 1898. Thus, when Runge
was appointed as a mathematics professor in the winter semester of
1904/05, the staff of science professors was also impressive. The Physics
professors were Eduard Riecke (1845-1915) and Woldemar Voigt (1850-
1919). Karl Schwarzchild was a professor of astronomy. Hermann
Theodor Simon (1870-1918) was the head of the Institute of Applied
Electronics; Ludwig Prandtl, of the Institute of Applied Mechanics; Emil
Wiechert, of the Institute of Geophysics.
Max Born (future Nobel Prize in physics for his contributions to
quantum mechanics) was then Hilbert’s “private assistant”. This was,
according to Born, a “rather vague job […] unpaid but precious beyond
description by providing me the opportunity of seeing him and listening to
him every day.”5 As reported by C. Reid, “in the morning Born came to
Hilbert’s house, where he usually found Minkowski already present.
Together, the three discussed the subject matter of Hilbert’s coming
lecture, which was often taking place that same morning.”6 But not all the
work of the assistant consisted of mathematical speculation and the
preparation of the classes. Born was one of those in charge, for example,
of taking notes for a course taught by Hilbert in the summer semester of
1905,7 which we will refer to in the next chapter, notes that were then
deposited in the Lesezimmer, so that all students could consult and discuss
them.

5
Born 1965, 4.
6
Reid 1970, 103.
7
The other was Ernst Hellinger, then a mathematics student in Göttingen.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE CONSISTENCY OF ANALYSIS
In Grundlagen der Geometrie, Hilbert had demonstrated the consistency

of Euclidean geometry through the exhibition of a model in which all the
axioms of plane geometry were satisfied. This model was that of analytic
geometry, whose consistency was taken for granted. Thus, the remaining
task was to axiomatize analysis and to prove the consistency of the
resulting axiom system. The first task was accomplished by Hilbert in the
article “Über den Zahlbegriff”, where he characterized the real numbers
system as a complete Archimedean ordered field (see Chapter 10).
Nonetheless, because analysis is also an axiomatic theory, the proof of
the consistency of the axioms of geometry set out in Grundlagen der
Geometrie was just a proof of the relative consistency of these axioms. To
demonstrate the absolute consistency of the axioms of geometry it was
necessary to prove the consistency of the axioms that define the real
numbers as a complete ordered Archimedean field. Thus, in his famous list
of problems presented in the Congress of Paris in 1900, Hilbert had put the
question of whether it was possible to give a direct proof of the non-
contradiction of the axioms that determine the structure of the real
numbers system, which he called simply the axioms of arithmetic (see
Chapter 11).
Hilbert was convinced of the possibility to easily find a syntactic,
purely logical proof of the consistency of these axioms, reformulating the
methods of proof usually employed in Dedekind’s and Weierstrass’s
theory of irrationals to this end. But Hilbert’s confidence was cut short by
Zermelo and Russell’s discovery of the paradoxes of logic and set theory
(see Chapter 13), for it was now obvious that the consistency proof of
analysis could not be done using means just proved to be inconsistent.
This led Hilbert to think that a proof of the consistency of the axioms of
analysis, at least by the means of pure logic, as proposed by him in his
1900 lecture, was impossible. And this, in turn, led him to redefine his
program for the foundations of mathematics and his understanding of the
relationship between arithmetic and logic.
132 Chapter Fourteen
This rethinking is already evident in the lecture “Über die Grundlagen

der Logik und der Arithmetik” (“On the foundations of logic and
arithmetic”) (1904) delivered at the Third International Congress of
Mathematicians, celebrated in Heidelberg, where Hilbert also outlined for
the first time a solution to the second problem of his list of 1900. Thus, in
the first lines of this lecture, Hilbert warns of the fundamental difference
between arithmetic and geometry regarding the inquiry into the
foundations of both disciplines:
In examining the foundations of geometry, it was possible for us to leave
aside certain difficulties of a purely arithmetic nature; but recourse to
another fundamental discipline does not seem to be allowed when the
foundations of arithmetic are at issue.1
It is true, says Hilbert, that “arithmetic is often considered to be a part of

logic, and the traditional fundamental logical notions are usually
presupposed when it is a question of establishing a foundation of
arithmetic.”2 So one could perhaps consider the possibility of grounding
arithmetic in logic, but Hilbert warns:
If we observe attentively, however, we realize that in the traditional
exposition of the laws of logic certain fundamental arithmetic notions are
already used, for example, the notion of set and, to some extent, also that
of number. Thus, we find ourselves turning in a circle, and that is why a
partly simultaneous development of the laws of logic and of arithmetic is
required if paradoxes are to be avoided.3
Hilbert merely outlined in this paper the joint development of logic and
arithmetic mentioned in the text above and the programmatic ideas that
should lead ultimately to prove the consistency of analysis. In the case of
logic, he did not specify a logical system and just talked about “familiar
forms of logical inference.” Regarding arithmetic, he attempted to
demonstrate its consistency by first reformulating the Peano axioms. The
Hilbert axioms are the following:
1. ‫ݔ‬ൌ‫ݔ‬
2. ሼ‫ ݔ‬ൌ ‫ݓݕ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻሽȁ‫ݓ‬ሺ‫ݕ‬ሻ
3. ‫ݏ‬ሺ‫ݔݑ‬ሻ ൌ ‫ݑ‬ሺ‫ ݏ‬ᇱ ‫ݔ‬ሻ
4. ‫ݏ‬ሺ‫ݔݑ‬ሻ ൌ ‫ݏ‬ሺ‫ݕݑ‬ሻȁ‫ ݔݑ‬ൌ ‫ݕݑ‬

1
Van Heijenoort 1967, 130.
2
Ibid., 131.
3
Ibid.
The Consistency of Analysis 133
5. തതതതതതതതതതതതതതത
‫ݏ‬ሺ‫ݔݑ‬ሻ ൌ ‫ͳݑ‬,
where ‫ ݑ‬represents an infinite set, ‫ ݔݑ‬an element of this infinite set, ‫ݏ‬
denotes “successor” and ‫ ݏ‬ᇱ the “accompanying operation.”4 All axioms are
easy to read, except perhaps no. 3 which states that “each element ‫ ݔݑ‬is
followed by a definite thought-object ‫ݏ‬ሺ‫ݔݑ‬ሻ, which is equal to an element
of the set ‫ݑ‬, namely, the element ‫ݑ‬ሺ‫ ݏ‬ᇱ ‫ݔ‬ሻ, which likewise belongs to the set
‫ݑ‬.”5 So Hilbert ignores the Peano axioms “ͳ is a number” and the so-
called “principle of complete induction,” which will nevertheless be stated
later.
The argument sketched by Hilbert to demonstrate the consistency of
the above axioms seems to be the following. To prove the consistency of
the axioms 1, 2, 3 and 4, Hilbert’s reasons as follows:
(i) A contradiction is a statement of the form ‫ ܣ‬and not ‫;ܣ‬

(ii) None of the previous axioms contains a negation;
(iii) Its conjunction can never, therefore, engender a contradiction.
This reasoning cannot be applied, however, to axiom 5, which explicitly

contains a negation. Hilbert’s idea to demonstrate the non-contradiction of
this axiom and, ultimately, the non-contradiction of the axioms of
arithmetic, is to attribute to the axioms one property (“to be a
homogeneous equation”) that is preserved by the rules of inference, so that
if ‫ ܨ‬is a formula derivable from the axioms, then ‫ ܨ‬will be a homogeneous
equation.6 Furthermore, the denial of a homogeneous equation is not
homogeneous and, therefore, the corresponding formula will not be
derivable. In this way, Hilbert proves or intends to prove by induction on
derivations that:
(iv) Axioms 1, 2, 3 and 4 are homogeneous;

(v) All the statements inferred from the previous axioms are
homogeneous;
(vi) The negation of axiom 5, which is not homogeneous, is not
derivable, therefore, from the axioms 1, 2, 3 and 4; but that is
the same as saying that the conjunction 5 with 1, 2, 3, 4 is not
contradictory and, since these last axioms are not

4
The distinction between “successor” and the “accompanying operation” seems
unnecessary.
5
Ibid., 133.
6
An equation ܽ ൌ ܾ is called homogeneous if and only if ܽ and ܾ have the same
number of symbols occurrences.
contradictory, that the axioms of arithmetic are not

contradictory.
Although Hilbert was aware that he had only hinted how to give a
“complete proof” of the consistency of arithmetic, he was convinced that
“the considerations just sketched constitute the first case in which a direct
proof of consistency bas been successfully carried out for axioms.”7
Furthermore, Hilbert continues, “if we translate the well-known axioms
for mathematical induction into the language I have chosen, we arrive in a
similar way at the consistency of this larger number of axioms, that is, at
the proof of the consistent existence of what we call the smallest infinite
set (that is, of the ordinal type ͳǡ ʹǡ ͵ǡ ǥ).”8
However, Hilbert’s confidence was cut off by Henri Poincaré, who
published soon after a lengthy article titled “Les mathématiques et la
logique” (1905, 1906) in which he evidenced the constant circularity of the
reasoning used by Hilbert in the proof of the consistency of the axioms of
arithmetic. More specifically, Poincaré observed that the consistency
proofs of the axioms that refer to an infinite set of statements require
complete induction, so that “Hilbert’s reasoning not only assumes the
principle of induction, but assumes that this principle is given to us, not as
a mere definition, but as an a priori synthetic judgment.”9 This is an
especially serious problem because one of the most important and well
known axioms of arithmetic is precisely the principle of complete
induction, so as Poincaré observed, in order to prove its consistency,
Hilbert is forced to employ the principle of complete induction itself!
In fact, at the end of the 1904 conference Hilbert himself seems to
realize the circularity of his proof that the negation of axiom 5 does not
follow from the rest of axioms and, anticipating Poincaré’s objections,
sketches the way to avoid circularity in this and other consistency proofs:
Whenever in the preceding we spoke of several thought-objects, of several
combinations, of various kinds of combinations, or of several arbitrary
objects, a bounded number of such objects was to be understood. Now that
we have established the definition of the finite number we are in position
to comprehend the general meaning of this way of speaking. The meaning
of the “arbitrary” consequence and of the “differing” of one proposition
from all proposition of a certain kind is also now, on the basis of the

7
Ibid., 135.
8
Ibid. In other words, the consistency of the principle of complete induction with
the axioms 1 to 5 can be demonstrated in a way similar to that used in order to
prove these axioms.
9
Ewald 1996, vol. 2, 1059.
definition of the finite number (corresponding to the idea of mathematical

induction), susceptible of an exact description by means of a recursive
procedure. It is in this way that we can carry out completely the proof,
sketched above, that the proposition ‫ݏ‬൫‫ ݔݑ‬ሺ଴ሻ ൯ ൌ ‫ ͳݑ‬differs from every
proposition obtained as a consequence of Axioms 1-4 by a finite number of
steps; we need only consider the proof itself to be a mathematical object,
namely a finite set whose elements are connected by propositions stating
that the proof leads from 1-4 to 6, and we must then show that such a proof
contains a contradiction and therefore does not exist consistently in the
sense defined by us.10
These ideas preclude the direction of the future work of Hilbert and his
collaborators on the foundations of arithmetic in the decade of the
twenties. In particular, for the first time, the idea of a proof theory
(Beweistheorie) appears in the above text (“we need only consider the
proof itself to be a mathematical object”), that is, of a mathematical theory
which studies the mathematical proofs formalized in the language of
symbolic logic. As Hilbert will explain later, a formalized proof is a finite
sequence of formulae whose structural properties are accessible to
intuitive and finite (metamathematical) reasoning. This makes possible the
consistency proofs, which deal with the proofs used in mathematics and
not with the objects or abstract concepts these proofs refer to. Ultimately,
thanks to formalization, a mathematical proof of consistency can be
reduced to a finite string of simple arithmetic statements. Therefore, two
principles of complete induction must be distinguished: an intuitive and
finite one and another properly mathematical one. In this way Hilbert will
respond in the twenties to the objections of Poincaré.
In the last paragraphs of the 1904 conference, Hilbert writes that the
consistency of analysis can be proved in an analogous way:
The existence of the totality of real numbers can be demonstrated in a way
similar to that in which the existence of the smallest infinite set can be
proved; in fact, the axioms for real numbers as I have set them up […] can
be expressed by precisely such formulas as the axioms hitherto assumed
[…], and the axioms for the totality of real numbers do not differ
qualitatively in any respect from, say, the axioms necessary for the
definitions of the integers.11
However, Hilbert did not specify what this analogy of expression among
the axioms of arithmetic and the axioms of analysis consists of, nor did he

10
Van Heijenoort 1967, 137. Proposition number 6 is precisely ‫ݏ‬൫‫ ݔݑ‬ሺ଴ሻ ൯ ൌ ‫ͳݑ‬,
which could be read as “At least for one ‫ݔݑ‬, the successor of ‫ ݔݑ‬is ‫ͳݑ‬.”
11
Ibid., 137-38.
attempt to demonstrate the non-contradiction of the latter axioms

following the methodology employed to prove the non-contradiction of the
former.
Fig 14-1. Logische Principien des mathematischen Denkens. Lecture notes by Max
Born. Unpublished manuscript.
In the summer semester of 1905, just a few months after the Heidelberg
conference, Hilbert taught a course entitled Logische Principien des
mathematischen Denkens (Logical Principles of Mathematical
Thinking).12 In these lectures, Hilbert attempted to develop the idea,

formulated at the conference of 1904 on the foundations of logic and
arithmetic, of a piecewise simultaneous development of these two
disciplines and to clarify some of the programmatic ideas outlined in that
conference.
In the Heidelberg conference Hilbert had said almost nothing about the
logical laws required for the formalization of arithmetic. Now in the 1905
lectures he presented a logical calculus, which he regarded as the main
tool for the simultaneous development of logic and arithmetic. In fact, in
these lectures he applied for the first time the axiomatic method to logic
and, more precisely, to propositional calculus. This means that he not only
axiomatized propositional calculus, but also raised such metalogical
questions about it as the independence and non-contradiction of its axioms
and the decidability of its theorems.
However, Hilbert did not advance much in relation to his project of a
joint development of logic and arithmetic to prove the consistency of
analysis. Indeed, as pointed out by V. Peckhaus, “Hilbert did not further
elaborate his thoughts on the logical foundations of mathematics at that
time since he believed Ernst Zermelo capable of solving the problems in
axiomatizing logic and set theory”13 and thus to resolve the paradoxes
discovered independently by Russell, Zermelo and himself.
We already know that in 1908 Zermelo expounded his famous
axiomatization of set theory which allows avoiding the set-theoretic
paradoxes. The same year Zermelo also addressed the problem of the
axiomatization of logic in a lecture given at the University of Freiburg
entitled Mathematische Logik, but he just introduced a set of axioms for
propositional calculus and the calculus of classes. Hence, in the lectures
entitled Elemente und Prinzipienfragen der Mathematik (1910), Hilbert
could say that Russell’s paradox had been solved in its set theoretic
formulation by Zermelo, but that “it has not yet been resolved in a
satisfactory way as a logical antinomy.”14
The first solution to this antinomy appeared in Russell’s paper
“Mathematical Logic as based on the Theory of Types” (1908) and in
Russell’s and Whitehead’s book Principia Mathematica (1910-13). In
both places the solution comes via the so-called theory of ramified types,
which is also applied in the book to reduce the whole edifice of
mathematics to logic. This explains the interest in Hilbert’s circle at

12
This is the course, whose lecture notes were taken by Ernst Hellinger and Max
Born, we referred to in the last chapter.
13
Peckhaus 1994, 317.
14
Hilbert 1910, 159.
Göttingen in knowing Russell’s mathematical logic and, to a certain

extent, the growing interest in logic and the foundations of mathematics in
Göttingen from 1914 on.15
Because of the influence of Principia Mathematica and of Poincaré’s
criticism of his talk of 1904, Hilbert abandoned the project of a joint
development of logic and arithmetic in this period to attack the proof of
the consistency of analysis and called for a reduction of the axioms of
arithmetic to logic.

15
The central figure in the absorption of Principia in Göttingen was Heinrich
Behmann (1891-1970), who gave four different talks between 1914 and 1917 on
the logical achievements of that work in the Colloquium of the Göttingen
Mathematical Society. In 1918, he obtained his doctorate with a thesis entitled Die
Antinomie der trans¿niten Zahl und ihre AuÀösung durch die Theorie von Russell
und Whitehead (The Antinomy of Trans¿nite Numbers and its Resolution by the
Theory of Russell and Whitehead), written under the supervision of Hilbert. See
Mancosu (1999, 304-305).
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MINKOWSKI AND THE EARLY RECEPTION

OF RELATIVITY THEORY AT GÖTTINGEN
After the Heidelberg conference, Hilbert continued his research on integral

equations and began, at the request of Minkowski, the study of classical
physics. A year later, Hilbert and Minkowski decided to conduct a weekly
seminar on physics, more concretely on the electrodynamics of moving
bodies. The participants of the seminar, Emil Wiechert, Max von Laue
(1879-1960), Max Born, Max Abraham (1875-1922), Arnold Sommerfeld
and Gustav Herglotz among others, studied the papers of Hendrik Lorentz
(1853-1928), Poincaré and others on the difficulties which the theories of
the electrodynamics had run into because of the well-known Michelson-
Morley experiment. However, the most recent publications of Lorentz and
Poincaré, in which the principle of relativity and the Lorentz
transformation were exploited more fully, were neglected.
In the same year of 1905, an examiner of patents at the Patent Office at
Bern named Albert Einstein (1879-1955) published four epoch-making
scientific papers dealing with similar topics to those dealt with in the
seminar. In the first paper, Einstein described a method for determining
molecular dimensions. In the second, he explained the photo-electric
effect, for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1921. In the third one, he
presented a molecular kinetic theory of heat. The last paper, titled
“Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”, was the first presentation of what
became known as the Special Relativity Theory. However, according to
Born, “nothing was as yet known in Göttingen, and in the Hilbert-
Minkowski seminar the name of Einstein was never mentioned.”1
The interest of Hilbert and Minkowski in physics was neither new nor
spurious. The axiomatization of physics was one of the problems on
foundations Hilbert had presented at the Paris Congress, although he had
never published any paper on this or a similar topic. It not was until the
academic year of 1902/03 that he taught his first lecture course on

1
Reid 1970, 105.
140 Chapter Fifteen
mechanics. The next lecture courses on the same topic were taught in
1905/06 and 1906/07, which shows Hilbert’s renewed interest in this
subject.2 However, from then and until 1910, he taught no additional
courses on physical matters.
The contact of Minkowski with physics was closer. He had already
lectured on mechanics at the Federal Polytechnical School in Zürich,
where Walter Ritz (1878-1909), Albert Einstein, and Marcel Grossmann
(1878-1936) were among his students. From 1902, he also lectured on
these subject and other related topics at the University of Göttingen. From
1907 and until his death in 1909, Minkowski dedicated much efforts to the
study of electrodynamics and the principle of relativity. He was indeed the
first mathematician in Germany to take an interest in relativity theory and
the main protagonist in the mathematical reformulation of this theory.
In 1905, the Hungarian Academy of Science instituted a prize of
10,000 gold crowns, a very generous amount for the time, for the
mathematician who had contributed most significantly to the progress of
mathematics in the last 25 years. The award, later known as the Bolyai
Prize in honour of the Hungarian mathematician János Bolyai, one of the
discoverers of non-Euclidean geometry, fell into the hands of Henri
Poincaré. However, as a courtesy to Hilbert, the committee that granted
the prize unanimously voted that in the report sent to the Academy to
justify their election they would put Hilbert’s contributions to mathematics
on an equal footing with those of Poincaré. Klein, who was one of the
members of the committee, would recognize later that the prize was
awarded to Poincaré for the generality and breadth of his contributions to
mathematics and ventured that “Hilbert will yet encompass as
comprehensive a field as Poincaré!”3 Klein was not wrong. In fact, Hilbert
was doing at that time what would perhaps be his most important
contribution to mathematics and, undoubtedly, the coronation of his
contributions to mathematical analysis: his research on what would later
be called Hilbert spaces.
Following the seminar conducted with Hilbert, Minkowski turned his
attention to the theory of heat radiation. In 1906 he gave a lecture on
recent work in this area by Max Planck (1858-1947) and Walther Nernst
(1864-1941) for the Göttingen Mathematical Society, and in the summer
semester of 1907 he also offered a course on this subject. Minkowski’s

2
Since the founding of physical institutes in the 1870s, theoretical physics had
become the affair of specialists like Max Planck or Ludwig Boltzmann (1844-
1906). However, mathematicians stayed up-to-date with the latest research in
analytical mechanics and usually taught this subject in universities.
3
Ibid., 106.
Minkowski and the Early Reception of Relativity Theory at Göttingen 141
course notes indicate that he was familiar with Planck’s pioneering article
on relativistic thermodynamics, in which he praised Einstein’s relativity
paper. On October 9, 1907, Minkowski wrote to Einstein to request an
offprint of his 1905 paper to discuss it in his seminar with Hilbert on the
electrodynamics of moving bodies. On November 5, 1907, he gave a
lecture about Space and Time entitled “The Relativity Principle” in the
Göttingen Mathematical Society.
Einstein’s achievements came to Minkowski as a great surprise, since
he did not believe Einstein possessed the mathematical background
necessary to create such a theory. Remembering the year in which he had
Einstein as a student in Zürich, Minkowski once exclaimed: “Ach, der
Einstein, der schwänzte immer die Vorlesungen௅dem hatte ich das gar
nicht zugetraut!” (Oh, that Einstein, always missing lectures࣓I really
would not have believed him capable of it!).4 He also once admitted to his
student Max Born, that “for me it came as a tremendous surprise, for in his
student days Einstein had been a real lazybones. He never bothered about
mathematics at all.”5
In 1906, while continuing his abstract research on integral equations
and function spaces, Hilbert taught a course on calculus for first year
students and began his ski classes. In the spring, Hilbert bought a bicycle
and at age 45 he started learning to ride a bicycle. Unlike skiing, which
was nothing more than a momentary pastime, bicycle trips, hiking or
gardening, often accompanied his creative part. Thus, Hilbert, who often
worked in the garden of his house, writing on a large blackboard that was
hanging on the wall of his neighbour, could stop his creative work for a
while and go biking, prune a tree or dig a hole in the garden to plant
something. Shortly afterwards, according to Courant, who often watched
Hilbert working in the garden of his house from the balcony of his room,
he would continue with the problem he had left in a “fantastic balance
between intense concentration and complete relaxation.”6
Richard Courant had begun his studies at the University of Breslau
where he had become friends with Otto Toeplitz and Ernst Hellinger, who
were a bit older than him. When they left for Göttingen, they convinced
Courant to join them, because the academic level of Göttingen was much
higher than that of Breslau. When Courant arrived in Göttingen in 1907,
he attended Minkowski and Hilbert’s courses and a year later he became
Hilbert’s assistant, a post that he held during four semesters. In 1910 he
obtained his doctorate with a thesis on the Dirichlet principle and in 1912

4
Ibid., 105.
5
Seelig 1956, 28.
6
Reid 1970, 109.
142 Chapter Fifteen
he got the venia legendi with a habilitation thesis about the existence
proofs in mathematics. However, it was not until 1918, after the Great War
had finished, that he started working as an associated professor in
Göttingen.
In the summer of 1908 Hilbert fell into a depression caused, according
to Blumenthal, by his imprudent physical and mental excesses, in any case
without any other reason or a known external cause. Because of this, he
entered a sanatorium in the Harz mountains near Göttingen. There he
rested for a few months and once he recovered he returned to classes in the
fall of that same year. Meanwhile, Minkowski was at the top of his
creative activity.
On December 21, 1907, Minkowski had presented a talk to the
Göttingen scientific society, which was published on 5 April 1908, in
Göttinger Nachrichten under the title “Die Grundgleichungen für die
elektromagnetischen Vorgänge in bewegten Körpern” (“The Basic
Equations for Electromagnetic Processes in Moving Bodies”). On
September 21, 1908, in the 80th annual general meeting of the Society of
German Scientists and Doctors at Köln (Cologne), Minkowski presented
his famous talk “Raum und Zeit” (“Space and Time”). In it he presented
his famous mathematical model, the so-called Minkowski space-time. In
this model it was possible to represent mathematically the physical
properties of the universe described by Einstein’s theory of special
relativity, according to which the notions of space and time cease to be
absolute and become indissolubly united.
Recovered from his illness, in the fall of 1908 Hilbert attacked a well-
known problem of number theory. The English mathematician Edward
Waring (1734-1798) had conjectured in his Meditationes Algebraicae
(1770) that every natural number could be expressed as a sum of at most
four squares, nine cubes or nineteen fourth powers and, in general, as a
finite number of ݊-powers. This assertion has been traditionally
interpreted as saying that every positive integer can be expressed as a sum
of at most ݃ሺ݇ሻ ݇ powers of positive integers, where ݃ሺ݇ሻ depends only
on ݇, not on the number being represented.7 The case ݇ ൌ ʹ had been
stated by Fermat in 1640 and, after long withstanding unsuccessful attacks
by Euler, it was finally proved by Lagrange in 1770, who showed that
each positive integer could be expressed as a sum of at most four squares

7
So, for example, Waring speculated that ݃ሺʹሻ ൌ Ͷ, ݃ሺ͵ሻ ൌ ͻ and ݃ሺͶሻ ൌ ͳͻ,
that is, it takes no more than 4 squares, 9 cubes, or 19 fourth powers to express any
integer.
of positive integers. After Lagrange success, particular cases of the

problem were solved for ݇ ൌ ͵ǡ Ͷǡ ͷǡ ͸ǡ ͹ǡ ͺǡ ͳͲ.
Although after 1770 little progress had been made in demonstrating
Waring’s conjecture, interest had recently grown due to the possibility of
applying certain analytical methods. Hurwitz had worked in this direction,
but he stopped, seeing himself unable to solve the problem. Hilbert started
just where Hurwitz had left off and at the end of 1908 he managed to
prove the generalized Waring’s conjecture, nowadays known as the
Hilbert-Waring theorem. The great English mathematician Godfrey
Harold Hardy (1877-1947), who some years later would give another
proof of the theorem along with John Edensor Littlewood (1885-1977),
would show his great admiration for Hilbert’s solution to this historic
problem and would affirm that “it is absolutely and triumphantly
successful [...] one of the landmarks in the modern theory of numbers.”8
Hilbert’s mathematical conquests, his international recognition, his
intense academic life, contact with nature, his natural optimism and
friendship with Minkowski must offered Hilbert an intellectual stimulus
that was hardly surmountable and probably something very similar to the
happiness that some Greek philosophers like Pythagoras, Plato or Aristotle
saw indissolubly associated with the bios theoretikos, the life dedicated to
the scientific activity. But in this clear and radiant sky a black cloud would
suddenly appear, a premonition that human life is fragile and vulnerable.
On Thursday, January 7, 1909, the four mathematics professors did
their weekly walk at three o’clock. Perhaps Minkowski explained his
recent work on the mathematics of special relativity and Hilbert his
extraordinary proof of Waring’s conjecture, which he would present at the
next meeting of the mathematics seminar. On Friday, Minkowski and
Hilbert continued their usual academic tasks. Then, on Sunday afternoon
Minkowski suffered a serious appendicitis attack and at night he was
admitted to the hospital. On Monday his condition worsened and on
Tuesday at noon he asked to see his family and Hilbert for the last time.
When Hilbert arrived at the hospital, Minkowski was already dead. On
Wednesday, Hilbert explained in the classroom, with tears in his eyes, the
death of his old and dear friend. On Thursday, at three o’clock, instead of
the usual mathematical walk, the mathematics professors accompanied
Minkowski’s body in his funeral procession.
Hilbert would never fully recover from Minkowski’s loss. To a certain
extent, Göttingen neither. After a certain debate among the mathematics
professors, the position left vacant by Minkowski’s death was offered to

8
Ibid., 114.
144 Chapter Fifteen
Edmund Landau (1877-1938), who had previously worked as Privatdozent

in Berlin and was only 32 years old. Landau’s specialty was the
application of analytical methods to number theory and, to a lesser extent,
function theory. He had no interest in geometry or mathematical physics
and, in general, he always showed an absolute contempt for applied
mathematics, contrary to what had been the spirit of the Göttingen
mathematics faculty, as it had been conceived by Klein.
The year of the death of Minkowski, a mathematician from Darmstadt,
Paul Wolfskehl, left in his will the amount of 100,000 marks for anyone
who could prove Fermat’s last theorem with the proviso that as long as it
was not possible to prove it, a committee of the Scientific Society of
Göttingen could discretionally dispose of the interests produced by that
amount of money. Hilbert became the chairman of the Wolfskehl-Stiftung
Committee (Committee for the Wolfskehl Foundation) created for this
purpose and thus, during the following years, money was mainly used to
invite professors of recognized prestige in mathematics and physics to
lecture in Göttingen. That same year the committee invited the man who
had been the great rival of Klein and had snatched the first Bolyai prize
from Hilbert, the great French mathematician Henri Poincaré, to give a
series of lectures at the Philosophical Faculty. The topics chosen by
Poincaré were that of the integral equations and that of the theory of
relativity, subjects to which he himself had contributed in a very
significant way and that he knew that they were of interest to the
mathematicians in Göttingen. Hilbert offered a great reception in his house
in honor of Poincaré and Klein, who turned sixty at that time.
In 1909 the philosopher Leonard Nelson (1882-1927), who could often
be seen walking and discussing with Hilbert about philosophy, logic and
mathematics, obtained the qualification for teaching as a Privatdozent in
the mathematical-scientific division of the Philosophical Faculty of
Göttingen. Nelson’s first attempt for the habilitation in 1904 had been
rejected in 1906 by the majority of the Philosophical Faculty, particularly
by those belonging to the philological-historical division. However, Klein
and Hilbert had supported Nelson’s habilitation on the grounds of his
mediating position in the philosophical foundations of mathematics and of
his knowledge of recent developments in mathematics. The fact is that
Nelson’s direct and irreverent style had offended the philosopher Edmund
Husserl (1859-1938), whose phenomenology was publicly ridiculed by
Nelson. Although he was finally habilitated in 1909, he did not obtain a
post as associate professor until 1919. In 1917, after Husserl’s retirement,
the majority of the Philosophical Faculty proposed Georg Misch (1878-
1965) for this position, but Klein, Hilbert, Peter Debye (1884-1966) and
Fig. 15-1 From left to right: Poincaré, Gösta Mittag-Leffler (1846-1927), Runge
and Landau at Hilbert’s home on the occasion of Klein’s sixtieth birthday.
146 Chapter Fifteen
Runge, among others, proposed Nelson instead. In the summer of 1918,

Landau and Carathéodory also sided with Hilbert’s minority group. After
long-withstanding accusations between the two divisions of the
Philosophical Faculty and negotiations with the Prussian Ministry of
Education௅in which Hilbert played a principal role promoting Nelson௅,
Misch was appointed full professor as a successor to Heinrich Maier
(1867-1933), who had held this position since 1911/12, and Nelson was
appointed associate professor. In this way, a schism between the two
divisions of the Philosophical Faculty was avoided. As remarked by Volker
Peckhaus, Hilbert’s long-withstanding support for the promotion of
Nelson, as well as his efforts on securing a better position for Ernst
Zermelo, were part and parcel of his strategy aimed at securing
institutional support for research in logic, set theory and the foundations of
mathematics.9
Also Hermann Weyl, who would be one of the most brilliant
mathematicians of Hilbert’s next generation, was appointed as
Privatdozent in Göttingen in 1909, a post that he held until 1913. It was
then that Weyl began a long and lasting friendship with Hilbert and
Courant, who would become Hilbert’s assistant in 1910. That year Hilbert
sent his latest communication on integral equations to the Göttingen
Scientific Society. Weyl and Courant would play a key role in the future
development of mathematics: Weyl as a successor to Hilbert’s chair in
mathematics at Göttingen and as professor at the Institute of Advanced
Studies at Princeton from 1933 and Courant as the first director of the
Mathematical Institute of Göttingen and, from 1936 onwards, as professor
at the University of New York and promoter of its Institute of
Mathematical Sciences, which currently bears his name.
In 1910, the Hungarian Academy of Science awarded the second
Bolyai prize “to David Hilbert, who by the profundity of this thought, the
originality of his methods, and the rigorous logic of his demonstrations has
already exercised considerable influence on the progress of the
mathematical sciences.”10 Poincaré, as the secretary of the committee
responsible for deciding the winner of the prize, was in charge of
summarizing the contributions of Hilbert to be presented to the Academy.
He mentioned to this effect Hilbert’s proof of Gordan’s theorem, the new
proof of the transcendence of the numbers ݁ and ߨ, his work on algebraic
number fields, his research on the foundations of geometry, the salvaging

9
See Peckhaus (1990, 4-22).
10
Reid 1970, 125.
of the Dirichlet principle, his proof of Waring’s conjecture and his

contributions to the theory of integral equations.
Two years later the book Grundzüge einer allgemeinen Theorie der
linearen Integralgleichungen (Elements of a general theory of linear
integral equations) (1912) was published. It contained the articles
published by Hilbert between 1904 and 1910 on integral equations.
Hilbert’s research on this topic had led him to the territory where
mathematics and physics came together. It should not be surprising, then,
that from 1912, Hilbert was devoted almost exclusively to physics, a
discipline that had attracted the attention of the best mathematicians of the
moment due to the discoveries that had been made in the previous decade.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
HILBERT’S FOUNDATIONS OF PHYSICS
The first decade of the 20th century had been undoubtedly a golden age
for physics: Heinrich Hertz had found the existence of the electromagnetic
waves predicted by James Maxwell (1831-1879), Wilhelm Röntgen (1845-
1923) had discovered X-rays, the Curies radioactivity, 1 Joseph John
Thomson (1856-1940) electrons, Albert Einstein had formulated the
special theory of relativity and Max Planck quantum theory. However,
Hilbert and other mathematicians of the time thought it lacked a certain
rigor in the development of theoretical physics. Now, according to Hilbert,
this rigor could only be achieved through the axiomatic method. “Physics,
Hilbert exclaimed on an occasion, is much too hard for physicists.” 2
Therefore, it was time for Hilbert to attack the problem, which he had put
in the sixth place of his famous Paris list, to axiomatize physics.
Although Hilbert’s mathematical efforts were concentrated until 1912
on mathematical problems and more specifically, on the theory of linear
integral equations, after Minkowski’s death he returned to lecture on
physical issues. Thus, after teaching mechanics and continuum mechanics
in the winter and summer semester of the academic year 1910/11, Hilbert
also taught statistical mechanics in the winter semester of 1911/12, and
kinetic gas theory and radiation theory in the winter and summer semester
of 1911/12. However, the decisive turn in Hilbert’s research interests
occurred in 1912, once he had finished his monograph on the theory of
linear integral equations. For now he considered the applications of this
theory as a means of clarifying the foundations of kinetic theory and
radiation theory. Hilbert’s idea was basically to apply the axiomatic
method and his theory of integral equations to specific branches of physics
as a concrete accomplishment of his axiomatization program of physics
postulated in Paris. The two fields that Hilbert attacked were first the
kinetic theory of gases and then the elemental theory of radiation, fields
whose concepts necessarily led to integral equations as the only possible

1
Marie Curie (1867-1934) and Pierre Curie (1859-1906).
2
Reid 1970, 127.
150 Chapter Sixteen
expression of the data. Hilbert would devote his efforts during the next
few years almost exclusively to mathematical physics.
Fig. 16-1 David Hilbert, 1912

Hilbert’s Foundations of Physics 151
From 1912 to 1914 Hilbert published a series of articles on kinetic theory

and the theory of radiation, which had a considerable impact in the
community of young researchers in Göttingen and elsewhere. After his
first paper on kinetic theory, Hilbert conducted a seminar on this topic
together with his former student Erich Hecke. The seminar was also
attended by the Göttingen docents Max Born, Paul Hertz (1881-1940),
Theodor von Kármán and Erwin Madelung (1881-1972). Also in 1912, to
be aware of the latest developments in physics, Hilbert called his old
friend and collaborator Arnold Sommerfeld to ask him to look for a young
researcher to become his assistant in this field. Sommerfeld offered the
post to Paul Ewald (1888-1985), who had studied with Hilbert at
Göttingen and had recently finished his dissertation in Munich. Now, he
would return to Göttingen as Hilbert’s assistant on physics. He was the
first to hold this position, which Hilbert would maintain for many years to
come.
In 1913 Niels Bohr (1885-1962), who often visited Göttingen,
proposed his well-known theory on the movement of electrons in atoms
and Hilbert did not miss the opportunity to talk with him. In fact, in the
last years Hilbert had been able to arrange the visit of prominent
researchers in the field of physics through the Wolfskehl Foundation.
Thus, in 1910 Lorentz was invited to Göttingen to talk about the theory of
relativity and radiation and in 1912 Sommerfeld gave a series of lectures
on the latest advances in physics. 3 In the spring of 1913, Hilbert
organized, under the auspices of the Wolfskehl Foundation, an important
conference in Göttingen on the kinetic theory of matter. The meeting was
held at the Royal Academy of Sciences in Göttingen and the lecturers
included some of the most prominent physicists of the time: Max Planck,
Peter Debye, Walther Nernst, Marian von Smoluchowski (1872-1917),
Arnold Sommerfeld, and Hendrik Lorentz.
As remarked by Leo Corry, “by the year 1913 Hilbert’s interest in a
wide variety of physical disciplines had become a truly central feature of
his current research and teaching concerns.”4 So, for example, “the topics
of his lectures on physics had expanded way beyond the more traditional
ones of classical mechanics and continuum mechanics and now covered
also statistical mechanics, radiation theory and the molecular theory of
matter.”5 In the winter semester of 1913/14 Hilbert taught his last course
on a physical issue before eventually turning to general relativity. It dealt

3
In the year 1911 the financial aid of the Wolfskehl-Stiftung had gone to Zermelo
for his contributions to set theory and in attention to his delicate health.
4
Corry 1999, 173.
5
Ibid., 174.
152 Chapter Sixteen
with electromagnetic oscillations. At the same time, the meetings of the

Göttingen Mathematical Society discussed several topics that were crucial
to Hilbert’s path in general relativity. So, for example, Max Born lectured
on “Mie’s Theory of Matter” (November 25 and December 16, 1913),
whereas Friedrich Böhm (1885-1965) lectured on the “Recent Work of
Einstein and Grossmann on Gravitation” (December 9, 1913).
Debye’s talk at the Royal Academy of Sciences, which dealt with the
equation of state, the quantum hypothesis and heat conduction, had
impressed Hilbert so much that the following year, 1914, he and the
mathematician Alfréd Haar (1885-1933) became professors at Göttingen.
That year the Great War began. The German government wrote an
infamous “declaration to the cultural world” (Aufruf an die Kulturwelt)
denying that Germany had provoked the war and refuting each one of “the
lies and accusations of the enemy” in this direction. The Kaiser’s
government asked the most prominent artists and intellectuals to sign the
declaration and most of the scientists did so (Klein, Planck, Röntgen,
Nernst, Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915), Emil Fischer (1852-1919), August von
Wassermann (1866-1925), Wilhelm Wien (1864-1928), among others).
Hilbert refused to sign the declaration on the pretext that he could not
verify each one of the statements that were made in it.
Despite the war, life continued in Göttingen. The mathematical walk
on Thursday continued as usual, but now Landau, Prandtl and
Carathéodory were added. However, most students and young professors
were called up. The Lesezimmer, always crowded by students before the
war, was now almost always empty. Hilbert, on the other hand, was
absorbed with physics, although his research and docent activities on
physical issues decreased considerably when compared with that of the
previous years. In 1914 he published a third paper on the foundations of
the theory of radiation and lectured once again on statistical mechanics.
In the summer semester of 1915, Hilbert also gave a course on the
structure of the matter. During that summer Albert Einstein visited
Göttingen, invited by the Wolfskehl Foundation. In the week from June 28
to July 5, he gave a series of six lectures to the Mathematical Society of
Göttingen in which he explained his latest research on gravitation and
relativity as expounded in the paper “The Formal Foundation of the
General Theory of Relativity” (1914). All that is left from these lectures is
11 pages of notes of his first lecture written by an unknown auditor of part
of these lectures.
There is also no documentation that certifies who attended the Einstein
lectures. Apart from Klein and Hilbert, there were professors of a certain
age such as Runge and Wiechert who were not called up for the military
service and who probably attended Einstein’s lectures. One of those

attending the conferences given by Einstein was Emmy Noether, who had
been appointed to the University of Göttingen that same year at the request
of Klein and Hilbert. Little more is known about that visit, but Einstein
would recognize in a letter addressed to Sommerfeld on July 15, just a
week after his stay in Göttingen, that he “had the great pleasure of seeing
that everything was understood to the details” and that he was “quite
enchanted with Hilbert.”6 Needless to say, Hilbert was also enchanted with
Einstein and really interested in Einstein’s latest approach to general
relativity theory.
Apart from the excitement caused by Einstein’s visit and the
subsequent discussion about his ideas, Hilbert and Einstein enjoyed each
other’s companionship and established a lasting personal bond. This was
due not only to the mutual admiration they professed, but also to their
open character, remote of any kind of pedantry, and their contempt for all
kinds of social conventions. They also shared a great interest in politics
and a firm belief in the international spirit of science. So, for example,
Einstein also refused to sign the German “declaration to the cultural
world,” although he had Swiss citizenship and, therefore, no one could
accuse him of treason. Hilbert was not only German, but Prussian, so his
refusal must be understood as a true act of political and vital courage.
In the Wolfskehl lectures at Göttingen Einstein presented his so-called
Entwurf theory, the precursor of the general theory of relativity, as
expounded in the “Formal Foundation” paper of 1914. One of the main
targets of this paper was the mathematical derivation of the field equations
of the Entwurf theory from a variational principle. However, the equations
presented in this paper were not generally covariant. Hilbert had studied
this paper carefully and had understood its arguments and technical
intricacies “down to the details.” So it is possible that he found problems
in Einstein’s derivation of the field equations and sought his own way to
derive fully covariant equations from variational principles. More
concretely, as remarked by U. Majer and T. Sauer, “his heuristic idea was
to try to connect Einstein’s theory to a generalized version of Maxwellian
electrodynamics which had recently been proposed by Gustav Mie […]
Hilbert’s central idea had been to combine both Mie’s and Einstein’s
theories by means of an invariant variational integral governing the
theory.”7

6
Schulmann 1998, 147.
7
Hilbert 2009, 10-11.
154 Chapter Sixteen
During the following months, Hilbert dedicated all his efforts to what
he called Die Grundlagen der Physik (The Foundations of Physics), that
is, the formulation of a unified theory of gravitational fields based on
Gustav Mie’s (1869-1957) electromagnetic theory of matter. On
November 20, 1915, Hilbert presented for publication in the Nachrichten
of the Mathematical-Physical Class of the Göttingen Academy of Science
his “First Communication” on “The Foundations of Physics.” Almost at
the same time, Einstein presented to the Prussian Academy of Berlin a
series of four papers (each separated from the other by a week: the 4th,
11th, 18th and 25th of November) in which he expounded his final version
of the theory of general relativity. Hilbert’s communication and Einstein’s
fourth note presented for the first time the generally covariant equations
for the gravitational field.
Since Hilbert’s paper was presented five days before Einstein’s
definitive paper on the topic, some historians have suggested the priority
of Hilbert over Einstein in the formulation of a generally covariant theory
of gravitation, including field equations. However, Hilbert’s paper did not
appear until 31 March 1916 and when Hilbert submitted his text on 20
November 1915 it did not contain these equations. Through a close
analysis of Hilbert’s papers, L. Corry, J. Renn and J. Stachel have
discovered a first set of proofs of the paper, bearing a printer’s stamp of
December 6, which displays substantial differences from the published
version. In particular, these historians emphasize the fact that the proofs do
not yet contain the explicit form of the gravitational field equations in
terms of the Ricci tensor and the Riemann curvature scalar.8 Only later,
some time after 6 December, could Hilbert have added the key passage
containing the gravitational field equations into the page proofs. Thus, it
seems that Hilbert did not anticipate Einstein in the formulation of these
equations.
The intense epistolary exchange between Einstein and Hilbert on
November 1915 and the shipment of their respective publications shows
the engagement of Hilbert in the mathematical formulation of the theory of
general relativity. This provoked a certain suspicion on the part of Einstein
about the partaking or “nostrification” (Nostrifizierung) of his theory by
Hilbert, but the fact is that Hilbert never claimed priority and often
admitted privately and publicly that the great idea was Einstein’s. 9 On

8
See Corry, Renn and Stachel (1997).
9
On November 26, 1915 a day after Einstein presented the final version of the
field equations he wrote his close friend Heinrich Zangger: “The general relativity
problem is now finally dealt with. The perihelion motion of Mercury is explained
wonderfully by the theory […] The theory has unique beauty. Only one colleague
December 20, 1915, Einstein wrote to Hilbert that “there has been certain
resentment between us, the cause of which I do not want to analyse. I have
fought against the associated feeling of bitterness with complete success. I
think of you again with unmixed kindness, and I ask you to try to do the
same with me. It is objectively a shame when two real guys that have
emerged from this shabby world do not give each other a little pleasure.”10
On 4 December 1915, Hilbert had presented to the Göttingen Academy
of Sciences a “Second Communication” on the “Foundations of Physics.”
However, its processing was postponed and a second version of it was
presented to the Academy on 26 February 1916, which was also
withdrawn from print at the beginnings of March. By mid-February
offprints of Hilbert’s First Communication were available and it is
presumable that Hilbert sent a copy to Einstein together with an invitation
to visit Göttingen again. Einstein’s response form 18 February did not
mention Hilbert’s paper but did state his intention to visit Göttingen. He
probably arrived there on 2 March 1916 and remained in Göttingen as
Hilbert’s guest for a few days.
In the March 1916 printed version of his November 20 paper, Hilbert
added a reference to Einstein’s November 25 paper and wrote: “the
differential equations of gravitation that result are, as it seems to me, in
agreement with the magnificent theory of general relativity established by
Einstein in his last papers.” 11 On May, 27, 1916 Hilbert invited again
Einstein to visit Göttingen again and stay with him; but in spite of several
invitations over the next few years, Einstein never came, although they
continued to correspond over issues connected with Hilbert’s paper.

has understood it really, but he tries in a tricky way to ‘nostrify’ it (an expression
due to Abraham). In my personal experience I have not learnt any better the
wretchedness of the human species as on occasion of this theory and everything
related to it. However, that does not concern me in the slightest.” Einstein to
Zangger, CPAE 8, Doc. 152
10
Einstein to Hilbert, CPAE 8, Doc. 167.
11
Cited from Corry, Renn and Stachel (1997, 344). It is worth mentioning,
however, that Hilbert did not only cite Einstein’s fourth note in this passage, but he
also pointed out that the derivation of the explicit form of the Einstein’s equations
form the variational formulation is indeed trivial.
156 Chapter Sixteen
Fig. 16-2 Albert Einstein, 1916
When the summer semester began, Hilbert had a new assistant for physics,
the mathematician Richard Bär (1892-1940). During this semester he
lectured on partial differential equations in continuation of the lecture
course on ordinary differential equations given in the previous semester.
He also conducted his weekly seminar on the “Structure of the matter”

together with Debye and taught a course entitled “Introduction to the
Principles of Physics.” This was followed by a course on “The
Foundations of Physics” in the winter-semester of 1916/17, the
Ausarbeitung of which was produced by Bär.
In August 1917, Bär left Göttingen. Instead of him, Paul Bernays
arrived in Göttingen as Hilbert’s assistant on logic and the foundations of
mathematics. This demonstrates that Hilbert had turned his full attention to
foundational topics in the fields of logic and mathematics. It does not
mean, however, that Hilbert had abandoned physics or did not lecture on
the foundations of physics anymore, but his lectures took a more
comprehensive and philosophical approach. So, for example, he tried to
connect the theory of relativity, his own search of a unified theory of the
gravitational and electromagnetic fields and quantum theory. It is also
worth mentioning that Hilbert would become the following years an
enthusiastic advocate of Einstein’s theory of relativity, which he described
in the closing passage of the 1922/23 lecture course entitled Wissen und
mathematisches Denken (Knowledge and mathematical Thought) as “one
of the most tremendous achievements of human spirit.”12

12
Cited from Corry (2004, 430).
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BEYOND PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA
After the 1904 Heidelberg conference on the foundations of logic and

arithmetic, Hilbert would not publish anything more about issues related to
logic and the foundations of mathematics until 1917. However, during this
period he taught several different courses on these issues, which shows
that he continued to be engaged with logical and foundational issues,
although these were not the main topic of his research.1
In the summer semester of 1917, Hilbert taught a course entitled
Mengenlehre (Set theory), which supposed a remarkable shift in Hilbert’s
main research interests. Near the end of these lectures, Hilbert observed
that he hoped “to be able to go more deeply into the foundations of logic”
in the next semester. Actually, during the following seven years, Hilbert
gave a series of lecture courses௅most of them with the assistance of
Bernays, who was also responsible for preparing the lecture notes௅, which
reveal a profound revision of his views on logic and the foundations of
mathematics.2
In September of 1917, Hilbert went to Zürich to present a conference at
the Swiss Mathematical Society. It seems likely that was in the course of
this stay in Zurich that Hilbert asked Bernays, a former student in
Göttingen, to become his assistant for logic and the foundations of
mathematics.3 Bernays accepted and began a fruitful collaboration
1
These are Logische Prinzipien des mathematischen Denkens (SS 1905),
Prinzipien der Mathematik (SS 1908, WS 1908/09), Elemente und
Prinzipienfragen der Mathematik (SS 1910, SS 1913), Logische Grundlagen der
Mathematik (WS 1911/12) and Probleme und Prinzipienfragen der Mathematik
(WS 1914/15).
2
These are Prinzipien der Mathematik (WS 1917/18), Logik-Kalkül (WS 1920),
Probleme der mathematischen Logik (SS 1920); Grundlagen der Mathematik (WS
1921/22); and Logische Grundlagen der Mathematik (WS 1922/23 and WS
1923/24).
3
According to Constance Reid, Hilbert would have visited Zürich in the spring of
1917 and arranged an excursion with two young mathematicians from the circle of
Hurwitz: George Pólya (1887-1985) and Paul Bernays. Surprisingly for both, in
160 Chapter Seventeen
between the two men in the field of logic and the foundations of
mathematics that would culminate in one of the landmark works of the
twentieth century in this field: Grundlagen der Mathematik (The
Foundations of Mathematics), coauthored by Hilbert and Bernays and
published in two volumes at the beginning of the thirties.
The Zürich conference, entitled “Axiomatisches Denken” (“Axiomatic
thought”), supposed Hilbert’s public return, after the Heidelberg
conference in 1904, to the field of logic and the foundations of
mathematics. As we already know, in this talk Hilbert praised the
axiomatization of logic carried out by Whitehead and Russell at Principia
Mathematica (1910-13), describing it as “the crowning achievement of the
work of axiomatization as a whole,”4 but at the same time, he resumed the
subject of proof theory, which he had set aside since the 1904 conference.
In Principia, Russell and Whitehead expounded their well-known
solution of the Russell paradox and other paradoxes through the theory of
ramified types, a solution that Russell had previously exposed in the paper
“Mathematical Logic as based on the theory of types” (1908). Moreover,
in Principia the theory of ramified types is also applied to reduce the
whole edifice of mathematics to logic. The profound impact that the
Russell paradox had in Hilbert’s consistency program (see Chapter 13) and
the fact that Russell’s logicism offered a solution to Hilbert’s quest for the
consistency of mathematics explains the interest in Hilbert’s circle at
Göttingen for knowing Russell’s mathematical logic and, to a certain
extent, the growing interest in logic and the foundations of mathematics in
Göttingen from 1914 on.5
Because of the influence of Principia Mathematica and of Poincaré’s
criticism of his Heidelberg talk of 1904, Hilbert abandoned the project of a
joint development of logic and arithmetic to attack the proof of the
consistency of analysis and called for a reduction of the axioms of
arithmetic to logic. As Hilbert writes in the lecture notes Mengenlehre:
the ride uphill to the Zürichberg there was no talk of mathematics, but of
philosophy. Bernays, who had studied a bit of philosophy in Göttingen and was a
friend of Leonard Nelson, had then much more to say than Pólya, so when they
finished the excursion, Hilbert asked him to be his assistant at Göttingen (Reid
1970, 151-52). We have followed here the datation given in Hilbert (2013) of
Hilbert’s visit to Zürich (See Hilbert 2013, 35-36, n. 9, for more information on
this topic).
4
Hilbert 1965, vol. 3, 152. (Ewald 1996, vol. 2, 1113).
5
As we have already explained, the central figure in the absorption of Principia in
Göttingen was Heinrich Behmann (see Chapter 14, n. 15).
Beyond Principia Mathematica 161
If we set up the axioms of arithmetic but forego their further reduction and
take over uncritically the laws of logic, then we have to realize that we
have not overcome the difficulties for a first philosophical-epistemological
foundation; rather, we have just cut them off in this way.6
Hilbert then asks “to what we can further reduce the axioms” and responds
himself “to the laws of logic!”7 All this certainly put logic in the forefront
of Hilbert’s research on the foundations of mathematics. However, as
Bernays would later remark in his article “Hilbert Untersuchungen über
die Grundlagen der Arithmetik” (“Hilbert’s investigations on the
foundations of arithmetic”) (1935), Principia Mathematica could only
provide an “empirical confidence” of the consistency of the logical
axioms, not “complete certainty” as Hilbert sought, because the only thing
that can be done in the framework of Principia in this regard is to derive
theorems and to see that no contradiction follows from them. Thus, the
problem of proving the consistency of the axioms of logic and, with it, that
of proving the consistency of arithmetic and set theory, still remained
open. Moreover, as Hilbert writes in Axiomatisches Denken:
When we consider the matter more closely we soon recognize that the
question of the consistency of the integers and of sets is not one that stands
alone, but that it belongs to a vast domain of difficult epistemological
questions which have a specifically mathematical tint: for example (to
characterize this domain of questions briefly) the problem of the solvability
in principle of every mathematical question, the problem of the subsequent
checkability of the results of a mathematical investigation, the question of
a criterion of simplicity for mathematical proofs, the question of the
relationship between content and formalism in mathematics and logic, and
finally the problem of decidability of a mathematical question in a finite
number of operations.8
Hence, Hilbert continued, “we cannot rest content with the axiomatization
of logic until all questions of this sort and their interconnections have
been understood and cleared up.”9 All these issues and, in particular,
the decidability of a mathematical question in a finite number of
steps, seem to Hilbert “to form an important new field of research which
remain to be developed. To conquer this field we must, I am persuaded,
make the concept of mathematical proof itself into a specific object of
6
Quoted in Sieg (2013, 100).
7
Ibid.
8
Hilbert 1965, vol. 3, 152. (Ewald 1996, vol. 2, 1113).
9
Ibid.
Fig. 17-1 Paul Bernays, ca. 1920
investigation.”10 These are words with which Hilbert summarized again

the central idea of his Beweistheorie, which he had already expressed at
10
Ibid., 155 (1115).
the end of the Heidelberg conference of 1904 and will develop in a series
of lecture courses, talks and papers along the twenties.
In short, Hilbert’s insight was to apply the axiomatic method to the
logic of Principia, which, as Russell and Whitehead have
“experimentally” demonstrated, it can be used to provide a foundation for
mathematics. However, Principia Mathematica could only provide an
“empirical confidence” in the consistency of the logical axioms. So the
first step in Hilbert’s renewed program for the foundation of mathematics
was to present logic as a formal axiomatic system in such a way that the
axiomatic method could be applied to it in order to assail a “complete
certainty” about the consistency of its axioms. This was precisely the aim
of Hilbert’s next lectures.
After the Zürich conference, Hilbert announced for the winter semester
of 1917/18 the intriguing lecture course Prinzipien der Mathematik, the
protocols of which were prepared by Bernays. These lecture notes deserve
to be studied not only because Hilbert and Ackermann relied on them to
write his famous book Grundzüge der theoretischen Logik (Principles of
theoretical logic) (1928), but also because they presented, for the first time
in history, first-order logic as a separate and independent system from
second and higher-order logics and raised for the former logic the same
metalogical questions that had been posed for propositional logic in the
lecture notes of 1905. Indeed, as remarked by W. Ewald and W. Sieg, they
“are an historical milestone, fully comparable in importance to Frege’s
Begriffschrift and to Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica.”11
In these lecture notes Hilbert calls restricted function calculus what
we now call (many-sorted) first-order logic, that is, the logical calculus in
which only quantification of individual variables (i.e., variables whose
rank is a collection of individuals) is allowed. In order to present the
restricted function calculus as a formal axiomatic system, Hilbert first
enunciates all the primitive symbols: the variables and constants:
individual, propositional and functional; the logical symbols: negation,
disjunction and the universal quantifier (the rest of logical connectives and
the existential quantifier are introduced as auxiliary symbols); and, finally,
parentheses. Once this has been done, Hilbert defines the admissible
expressions of the calculus, that is, the formulas of first-order logic
recursively in metalanguage.
The importance of defining the formulas of language recursively lies in
the fact that it allows to treat these formulas as purely syntactic objects,
that is, as strings of symbols devoid of any meaning, which made it
possible to prove statements about all the first-order formulas. This
11
Hilbert 2013, 10.
recursive definition of the set of first-order formulas in these lectures is

therefore a worthy fact to emphasize not only because it was an effective
definition of this set, but also because it was an indispensable tool for most
proofs regarding metalogical questions, so important for Hilbert.
As Hilbert remarks, the basic function of restricted function calculus is
the presentation of theories from an axiomatic standpoint. Now, according
to him:
The calculus is well suited for this purpose mainly for two reasons: one,
because its application prevents that௅without being noticed௅assumptions
are used that have not been introduced as axioms, and, furthermore,
because the logical dependencies so crucial in axiomatic investigations are
represented by the symbolism of the calculus in a particularly perspicuous
way.12
Nevertheless, logic not only aims to formalize mathematical theories, but

also to provide a foundation for mathematics and, therefore, the restricted
function calculus is not enough; what Hilbert calls the extended function
calculus (which correspond to what we nowadays call second-order logic)
is also necessary. This calculus admits not only the quantification over
individual objects, but also over functions and predicates. As Hilbert
explains, this is necessary to carry out the reduction of number theory and
set theory to logic, for example, to formulate the principle of complete
induction or to define the relation of identity and the concept of number.
However, Hilbert continues, non-restricted quantification over
functions and predicates leads to contradictions. It is then necessary to
introduce what he calls the Stufen-Kälkul (calculus of levels), which is just
Hilbert’s version of Russell’s theory of ramified types. In either system,
one takes for granted a domain of individuals and basic properties and
relations between them, from which all further properties and relations (of
any level) are defined constructively by the logical operations. Now,
according to Hilbert, the reduction of mathematics conducted by
Whitehead and Russell in Principia Mathematica requires introducing a
further axiom, the axiom of reducibility, which presupposes the existence
of certain predicates and relations at each level which have not been
obtained from the basic properties and relations, “so that their multiplicity
depends neither on the definitions actually given, nor in any way on our
ability to give a definition.”13 As Hilbert admits, “such a procedure
appears at first very strange, but it is unavoidable so long as our goal is to
12
Hilbert 1917/18, 187 (Hilbert 2013, 179).
13
Ibid., 232 (206).
develop the foundations of set theory and analysis from the system of
functions of our calculus.”14
These remarks clearly indicate that Hilbert’s allegiance to logicism was
not complete. The problem was that the introduction of the axiom of
reducibility requires the expansion of the system of basic properties and
relations in such a way that the axiom is satisfied. But this cannot be
achieved in a purely logical constructive way. Thus, as remarked by
Hilbert in the lecture course Grundlagen der Mathematik (1921/22):
There remains only the possibility to assume that the system of predicates
and relations of the first-level is an independently existing totality
satisfying the axiom of reducibility. In this way we return to the axiomatic
standpoint and give up the goal of a logical foundation of arithmetic and
analysis. Because now a reduction to logic is given only nominally.15
With these words, Hilbert abandoned Russell’s logicist program and

resumed his old idea of a proof theory. Indeed, it was in this lecture course
that Hilbert formulated for the first time his new proof theory and the
finitist position (finite Einstellung), which are the essential components of
the so-called Hilbert’s program, his latest proposal to address the problem
of the foundation of mathematics (see Chapter 20). The above argument
would be later rehearsed in the talk “Die Grundlagen der Mathematik”
(“The foundations of mathematics”) (1926) and extended to Russell’s
axiom of infinity:
Russell’s and Whitehead’s theory of foundations is a general logical
investigation of wide scope. But the foundation that it provides for
mathematics rests, first, upon the axiom of infinity and, then, upon what is
called the axiom of reducibility, and both of these axioms are genuine
contentual assumptions that are not supported by a consistency proof; they
are assumptions whose validity in fact remains dubious and that, in any
case, my theory does not require.16
By the end of 1918 the Great War was over and the effects on Göttingen
were evident: The Lesezimmer presented many holes in its collection,
some professors such as Debye or Carathéodory left Göttingen and the
construction of the Mathematical Institute was postponed sine die. The
conditions of life also worsened remarkably: food was scarce, the
Papiermark (paper mark) lost a good part of its value and, in general, the
14
Ibid.
15
Hilbert 1921/22, 232.
16
future did not look good.17 On November 18, 1919, Hurwitz died and for
the second time, Hilbert adressed the Göttingen Scientific Society to pay a
heartfelt tribute to the memory of a friend of his youth.
The year of 1919 was also when Wilhelm Ackermann returned to
Göttingen. Ackermann had entered the University of Göttingen in 1914 to
study mathematics, physics and philosophy. But the outbreak of the First
World War meant that he had to join the ranks in 1915 and remain in the
army until 1919. That year he resumed his studies at Göttingen, obtaining
his doctorate in 1925 with a thesis entitled Begründung des “tertium non
datur” mittels der Hilbertschen Theorie der Widerspruchsfreiheit
(Foundation of the “tertium non datur” by means of Hilbert’s theory of
non-contradiction), written under the supervision of Hilbert. Although it
contained significant mistakes, Ackermann’s thesis was of particular
interest to Hilbert as it was the first non-trivial example of a finitist proof
of a part of elementary analysis (more concretely, of arithmetic without
induction).
After successfully defending his thesis, Ackermann went to Cambridge
with a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation. He remained there the
first half of 1925 and returned later to Göttingen, where he became,
together with Bernays, Hilbert’s main collaborator in questions related to
logic and the foundations of mathematics. One of the fruits of this
collaboration was the development of a logical system, called epsilon
calculus, originally devised by Hilbert and that would play a fundamental
role in Hilbert’s proof theory. Another fruit of the collaboration between
Hilbert and Ackermann was the writing of the book Grundzüge der
theoretischen Logik (Elements of theoretical logic), published in 1928.
Although, as the authors acknowledge in the preface, Grundzüge der
theoretischen Logik is based entirely on the lectures notes of 1917/18 and
the first edition of the book appeared ten years after Hilbert’s lectures in
Göttingen, the importance of Hilbert’s and Ackermann’s book in the
history of contemporary logic should not be underestimated. Firstly,
because the book allowed the dissemination outside the University of
Göttingen of the direction that the logical investigations of Hilbert’s circle
of collaborators (particularly Bernays and Ackermann) were taking.
Secondly, because Grundzüge der theoretischen Logik soon occupied the
17
In 1914 the Goldmark was replaced by the Papiermark in order to finance the
war effort. From 1918 the continuing loose money policy resulted in inflation, and
in 1923, in hyperinflation.
%H\RQGPrincipia Mathematica

The axiomatization of predicate calculus

Grundzüge der theoretischen Logik
7KH/DQJXDJHRI6HQWHQWLDO&DOFXOXV:HVKDOOHPSOR\FDSLWDOLWDOLF
OHWWHUV ܺǡ ܻǡ ܼǡ ܷǡ ǥ WR VWDQG IRU VHQWHQFHV 7R LQGLFDWH WKH ORJLFDO
FRPELQDWLRQ RI VHQWHQFHV ZH VKDOO LQWURGXFH WKH IROORZLQJ ILYH
V\PEROV
ܺതUHDG³QRWܺ´VWDQGVIRUWKHRSSRVLWHRUFRQWUDGLFWRU\RIܺ
WKDWLVIRUWKDWVHQWHQFHZKLFKLVWUXHLIܺLVIDOVHDQGZKLFKLV
IDOVHLIܺLVWUXH
ܺƬܻUHDG³ܻܺܽ݊݀´VWDQGVIRUWKHVHQWHQFHZKLFKLVWUXH
LIDQGRQO\LIERWKܺDQGܻDUHWUXH
ܺ ‫ܻ ש‬UHDG³ܺ‫´ܻݎ݋‬VWDQGVIRUWKHVHQWHQFHZKLFKLVWUXHLI
DQGRQO\LIDWOHDVWRQHRIWKHWZRVHQWHQFHVܺǡ ܻLVWUXH
ܺ ՜ ܻ UHDG ³݂݅ܺ‫ ´ܻ݄݊݁ݐ‬VWDQGV IRU WKH VHQWHQFH ZKLFK LV
IDOVHLIDQGRQO\LIܺLVWUXHDQGܻLVIDOVH
ܺ ‫ ܻ ׽‬UHDG ³݂ܺ݅ܽ݊݀‫ ´ܻ݂݅ݕ݈݊݋‬DOVR ZULWWHQ ܺ ՞ ܻ R
ܺ ֐ ܻ VWDQGV IRU WKH VHQWHQFH ZKLFK LV WUXH LI DQG RQO\ LI
ܻܺDUHERWKWUXHRUERWKIDOVH
7KH /DQJXDJH RI 3UHGLFDWH &DOFXOXV $PRQJ WKH V\PEROV ZKLFK
RFFXULQWKHSUHGLFDWHFDOFXOXVWKHUHDUHILUVWDOOYDULDEOHVRIGLIIHUHQW
NLQGV>@:HGLVWLQJXLVKDPRQJ
6HQWHQWLDOYDULDEOHVܺǡ ܻǡ ܼǡ ǥ
,QGLYLGXDOYDULDEOHV‫ݔ‬ǡ ‫ݕ‬ǡ ‫ݖ‬ǡ ǥ
3UHGLFDWHYDULDEOHV‫ܣ‬ǡ ‫ܤ‬ǡ ‫ܥ‬ǡ ǥ ‫ܨ‬ǡ ‫ܩ‬ǡ ‫ܪ‬ǡ ǥ
>Hilbert and Ackermann have previously introduced:@
8QLYHUVDO4XDQWLILHUሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ‫ܣ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻUHDG)RUDOO‫ܣݔ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻLVWUXH
([LVWHQWLDO 4XDQWLILHU ሺ‫ݔܧ‬ሻ‫ܨ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ UHDG ³7KHUH H[LVWV DQ ‫ ݔ‬IRU ZKLFK
‫ܣ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻLVWUXH´
5HFXUVLYH 'HILQLWLRQ RI )RUPXOD %\ WKH WHUP IRUPXOD ZH QRZ
XQGHUVWDQG WKRVH DQG RQO\ WKRVH FRPELQDWLRQV RI V\PEROV RI RXU
FDOFXOXV ZKLFK PD\ EH VKRZQ WR EH VXFK E\ D ILQLWH QXPEHU RI
DSSOLFDWLRQVRIWKHIROORZLQJUXOHV
$VHQWHQWLDOYDULDEOHLVDIRUPXOD
3UHGLFDWH YDULDEOHV ZKRVH DUJXPHQW SODFHV DUH ILOOHG E\
LQGYLGXDOYDULDEOHVDUHIRUPXODV
,IDQ\FRPELQDWLRQिRIV\PEROVLVDIRUPXODWKHQॏ ഥ LVDOVRD
IRUPXOD
,IिDQGीDUHIRUPXODVVXFKWKDWWKHVDPHLQGLYLGXDOYDULDEOH
GRHVQRWRFFXUERXQGLQRQHRIWKHPDQGIUHHLQWKHRWKHUWKHQ
cont. p. 168

िƬी, ि ‫ ש‬ी, ि ՜ ी, ि ‫ ׽‬ी are also formulas.

5. If िሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ is a formula in which the variable ‫ ݔ‬occurs as a free
variable, then ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻिሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ and ሺ‫ݔܧ‬ሻिሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ are also formulas. The
corresponding statement holds for other free variables.
The Axioms of Predicate Calculus: We now state the system of
axioms for the predicate calculus. As primitive logical formulas, we
first have the axioms of the sentential calculus, which for the sake of
simplicity we shall give in the same form as before.
ሻ ܺ ‫ ܺ ש‬՜ ܺ.
ሻ ܺ ՜ ܺ ‫ܻ ש‬.
ሻ ܺ ‫ ܻ ש‬՜ ܻ ‫ܺ ש‬.
ሻ ሺܺ ՜ ܻሻ ՜ ሺܼ ‫ ܺ ש‬՜ ܼ ‫ܻ ש‬ሻ.
ഥ ‫ ש‬ॐ).
(ि ՜ ॐ is again to be understood as an abbreviation for ि
In addition, we know have a group of two axioms for “all” and “there
exists” (the universal and existential quantifiers).
ሻ ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ‫ܨ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ՜ ሺ‫ݕ‬ሻ
ሻ ‫ܨ‬ሺ‫ݕ‬ሻ ՜ ሺ‫ݔܧ‬ሻ‫ܨ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ.
The first of these axioms means, “If a predicate ‫ ܨ‬holds for all ‫ݔ‬, then
it also holds for any arbitrary ‫ݕ‬.” The second formula means, “If a
predicate ‫ ܨ‬holds for some particular ‫ݕ‬, then there is an ‫ ݔ‬for which ‫ܨ‬
holds.”
Rules of Inference: We have the following rules for obtaining new
formulas from the primitive logical formulas, as well as from formulas
obtained therefrom.
(Į) Rules of substitution [Hilbert and Ackermann set up here the rules
for replacing the sentential variables, free individual variables and
predicate variables occurring in a formula by other variables of the
same type].
(ȕ) Rule of implication. From two formulas of the form ि i ि ՜ ी, the
new formula ी is obtained.
(Ȗ) Rules for the Universal and Existential Quantifiers.
(Ȗ1) From a formula ሺिሻ ՜ ीሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ, in which the part after the ՜
contains the free variable x while x does not occur in ि, the formula
ሺिሻ ՜ ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻीሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ is obtained.
(Ȗ2) Under the same hypothesis concerning ि and ीሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ, a formula
ीሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ՜ ि yields a new formula ሺ‫ݔܧ‬ሻीሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ՜ ि.
(į) Rules for Rewriting Bound Variables [Hilbert and Ackermann
explain how the replacement of a bound variable by a universal or
existential quantifier must be made].
place of Principia Mathematica as a reference book for the new generation

of logicians, headed by Kurt Gödel. Finally, because it became the book
that marked the consolidation of first-order as the logical system par
excellence and served as a basis for future metatheorical research on it.
In addition, the 1928 book presented some notable improvements over
the 1917/18 lectures. For example, the axiomatization of propositional and
first order logic carried out in the 1917/18 lectures presented some
unnecessary complications, since some of the axioms and rules of
inference presented there were redundant. Another of the fundamental
contributions of the book of 1928 in relation to the lectures of 1917/18 was
the exposition of the problem of the semantic completeness of function
calculus. In the lectures of 1917/18, Hilbert had raised and solved only the
problem of consistency and Post-completeness of the functional calculus.
According to the 1917/18 lectures, a system of axioms was complete “if
the addition of a formula, so far not proven, to the basic formula system
[i.e., axiom system] always gives rise to a contradictory system.”18 But
now, Hilbert and Ackermann also raise, for the first time in history, the
problem of the semantic completeness of the calculus:
If this system of axioms is complete, at least in the sense that all logical
formulas that are correct in every domain of individuals can be derived, is
a question that has not yet been answered.19
It is a well-known fact that Gödel would answer this question

affirmatively in his doctoral thesis, defended in 1929 at the University of
Vienna, which would be published a year later in the form of an article
with the significant title “Die Vollständigkeit der Axiom des logischen
Funktionenkälkuls” (“The Completeness of the Axioms of the Functional
Calculus of Logic”).
18
Hilbert 1917/18, 152 (Hilbert 2013, 157).
19
Hilbert and Ackermann 1928, 68.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE GREAT DEBATE ON THE

FOUNDATIONS OF MATHEMATICS
The year 1908 was not just the year when Russell and Zermelo published
for the first time their answers to the problem of paradoxes, the theory of
logical types and the axiomatic theory of sets, but also the year in which
the Dutch mathematician Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer (1881-1966)
published his famous article: “Onbetrouwbaarheid der logische principes”
(“On the Unreliability of the Logical Principles”), which can be
considered the first manifesto of the intuitionist current, one of the most
important and influential trends in the field of logic and the foundations of
mathematics of the 20th century.
As a program for the foundation of mathematics, Brouwerian
intuitionism emerged in clear opposition to Frege and Russell’s logicism
and to Hilbert’s formalism, so that the controversy with these two schools
was somewhat inevitable. This was already apparent in Brouwer’s doctoral
thesis entitled Over der Grondslagen der Wiskunden (On the Foundations
of Mathematics) (1907), where he lashed out not only against the attempts
of logicists and formalists to reduce mathematics to a mechanical
manipulation of symbols, but also against those authors like Hilbert and
Poincaré who identify the existence of a mathematical system with the
absence of contradiction, that is, with its consistency. For Brouwer, to
prove the existence of a mathematical object it was necessary to construct
it in our intuition.
Brouwer identified mathematics with the process or constructive
activity of the human mind from elements of what he called the primordial
intuition of time. By defining mathematics as a constructive thought-
activity from intuition, Brouwer always insisted on the fact that this
activity is non-linguistic. This radical distinction between mathematics and
mathematical language also brought with it an equally and absolute
distinction between mathematics and logic. Brouwer, in effect, defined
theoretical logic as an application of mathematics to the language of
logical reasoning, which is a particular case of mathematical reasoning,
172 Chapter Eighteen
namely, “that special kind of mathematical reasoning which remains if,

considering mathematical structures, one restricts oneself to relations of
whole and part.”1 The result of dealing mathematically with the linguistic
record of mathematical activity proper is the realization of a certain
regularity in the symbolic expression of this record. Logical principles, the
laws of classical logic, such as the principles of syllogism, contradiction or
excluded middle, are nothing more than the expression of these regularities
observed in records of previously constructed mathematical systems.
In his dissertation of 1907, Brouwer had considered the logical
principles as mere tautological statements, without any informational
content, so that they could not cause any error, provided they were applied
to previously constructed mathematical systems, independently of whether
these were finite or infinite. Later, in his famous and revolutionary article
of 1908, Brouwer wonders about the confidence in the principles of
syllogism, of contradiction and of the excluded middle even when these
are applied to already constructed mathematical systems and his response
is that “this confidence is well-founded for each of the first two principles,
but not for the last.”2 More concretely, Brouwer affirms that “as long as
only certain finite discrete systems are posited [...] the principium tertii
exclusi is a reliable principle of reasoning,” but “in infinite systems the
principium tertii exclusi is as yet not reliable.”3
Brouwer didn’t accept indeed the existence of complete or finished
infinite sets. The only infinite sets that could be generated from intuition
were the countable infinite sets, that is, the sets equipotent to the natural
numbers, and the continuum. However, Brouwer regarded these sets as
entities in a continuous process of generation in and from time, not as
complete or finished totalities to which it might be assigned a particular
cardinal number. As a result, Brouwer denied the existence of Cantor’s
transfinite numbers and the mathematical meaning of the Continuum
Hypothesis (in other words, Brouwer accepted, as Aristotle, the potential
infinite, but not the actual infinite).
The unreliability of the principle of excluded middle had the direct
consequence of the lack of validity of the demonstrations by reductio ad
absurdum since this kind of proofs is based on that principle. But these
demonstrations had been used recurrently in the history of mathematics,
especially in geometry. For instance, Hilbert had demonstrated his
finiteness theorem by a reductio ad absurdum, that is, he had proved the
existence of a finite basis for any system of invariants by deriving a
1
Brouwer 1975, 73.
2
Ibid., 109.
3
Ibid., 110.
The Great Debate on the Foundations of Mathematics 173
contradiction from the supposition of its non-existence. But for Brouwer

this was not enough: to prove the existence of a mathematical object (for
example, a finite basis for any system of invariants) it was necessary to
construct it in the intuition.
In his inaugural lecture at the University of Amsterdam, titled
“Intutionisme en Formalisme” (“Intuitionism and Formalism”) (1912),
quickly translated to German and English, Brouwer renewed his attack on
formalism. During the following years, Brouwer published a series of
articles whose main objective was to reconstruct mathematics from an
intuitionist point of view. To this end, Brouwer erected not only a brand-
new intuitionist set theory based on the concepts of spread and species, the
intuitionist equivalents of the classical concepts of set and property, but
also a new and revolutionary analysis of the continuum, the mathematical
substrate that underlies geometric considerations and which is the object of
study of mathematical analysis, based on the notion of choice sequence.
At the beginning of the 1920s Brouwer’s intuitionism was gaining
support among young mathematicians. Between 1918 and 1919 Brouwer
had published three intriguing papers on set theory: “Begrundung der
Mengenlehre unabhängig vom logischen Satz vom ausgeschlossene
Dritten. Erster Teil, Allgemeine Mengenlehre” (“Foundation of set theory
independent of the law of excluded middle. First Part, General Set
Theory”) (1918), which was followed by a second and a third part
published respectively in 1919 and 1923, and “Intuitionistische
Mengenlehre” (“Intuitionistic set theory”) (1919). At the same time,
Hermann Weyl, a former student of Hilbert in Göttingen and one of the
most brilliant mathematicians of the moment, had tried in his Das
Kontinuum (1918) to ground predicatively the real number system in the
natural numbers in order to avoid paradoxes. However, after talks he had
had with Brouwer in the Swiss Alps in the summer of 1919 and the
publication of Brouwer’s papers on set theory in 1918 and 1919, he
converted to intuitionism and renounced his own program for the
foundations of mathematics. Weyl’s public recognition of this conversion
to the intuitionist side took place in the paper “Über die neue
Grundlagenkrise der Mathematik” (“On the new foundational crisis of
mathematics”) (1921), where he diagnosed “a new crisis in the
foundations of mathematics” and hailed Brouwer’s approach to the
continuum via the choice sequences and his rejection of the principle of
excluded middle as the revolution:
And Brouwer ௅that is the revolution! […] It is Brouwer to whom we owe

the new solution of the continuum problem.4
As Weyl recognized in a letter to Brouwer from 06/05/1920, when he had

already finished the paper to be published the next year, the article was not
a scientific publication, but rather a “propaganda pamphlet” written in a
bombastic style “suited to rouse the sleepers.” The publication of Weyl’s
paper was indeed the starting point of the foundational crisis and the great
debate between intuitionists and formalists that developed along the
decade of the twenties, the two dominant themes of which were:
1. The meaning of “existence” and “constructivity” in mathematics

2. The status of the principle of excluded middle and logic.5
The first to react to Brouwer and Weyl’s challenge was not a sleeper, but
the most prominent and active mathematician of the time, David Hilbert,
who launched a counterattack the same year. Hilbert saw Brouwer and
Weyl’s constraints on mathematics–rejection of the principle of excluded
middle for infinite totalities, non-acceptance of pure existence proofs,
anathematization of the actual infinite, artificial importation of the vicious
circle principle in analysis, etc.–as a threat to the whole of mathematical
heritage and to his own contributions to mathematics. It was then natural
that Hilbert was the first to react to Weyl’s challenge and that he saw in
Brouwer’s and Weyl’s intuitionist programme the return of Kronecker’s
constraints on mathematical practice. Hilbert first reaction came in a series
of lectures delivered in Copenhagen and Hamburg, which were published
(at least partially) the following year in the article “Neubegrundung der
Mathematik. Erste Mitteilung” (“New foundations of mathematics. First
Communication”) (1922):
What Weyl and Brouwer do amounts, in principle, to following the
erstwhile path of Kronecker: they seek to ground mathematics by throwing
overboard all phenomena that make them uneasy and by establishing a
dictatorship of prohibitions à la Kronecker. But this means to dismember
and mutilate our science, and if we follow such reformers, we run the
danger of losing a large number of our most valuable treasures.6
Among the treasures to be lost following Brouwer and Weyl’s path Hilbert
cites, among others, the general concept of irrational number, the
transfinite numbers of Cantor and the principle of excluded middle. But as
4
Mancosu 1998, 99.
5
See Hesseling 2003, Chapters IV and V.
6
Mancosu 1998, 200.
said before, he could also have cited his finite basis theorem. Fortunately,
continues Hilbert, “Weyl and Brouwer will be unable to push their
programme through. No; Brouwer is not, as Weyl believes, the revolution,
but only a repetition, with the old tools, of an attempted putsch.”7
Before Hilbert’s conference was published, Paul Bernays gave a
lecture at the Mathematikertagung in Jena entitled “Über Hilbert’s
Gedanken zur Grundlegung der Arithmetik” (“On Hilbert’s thoughts
concerning the grounding of arithmetic”) (1922). Hilbert again spoke on
the foundations of mathematics in 1922. This time in a lecture entitled
“Die logischen Grundlagen der Mathematik” (“The logical foundations of
mathematics”) (1923), delivered to the Society of German Scientist and
Doctors and published the following year in Mathematische Annalen.
Here, as in his 1921 lecture in Hamburg, Hilbert presented his own
proposal for a definitive solution to the problem of the foundations of
mathematics imbued with the philosophical standpoint necessary to
answer Brouwer and Weyl’s criticisms: finitism. In 1923, the
mathematician and set-theorist Abraham Fraenkel entered the scene,
becoming the main commentator of the foundational debate during the
twenties. Other early participants in the debate were Julius Wolff (1882-
1945), Paul Finsler (1894-1970), Richard Baldus (1885-1945) and Oskar
Becker (1889-1964).
In the meanwhile, Brouwer developed his campaign for intuitionism
following a double path. On the one hand, he espoused the basic parts of
intuitionistic mathematics in the papers “Zur Begründung der
intuitionistischen Mathematik, I, II, III” published in 1925, 1926 and 1927
in Mathematische Annalen. On the other hand, he furnished new
constructive proofs of classical and intuitionist theorems of algebra and
analysis. Of this kind are, for instance, the papers “Besitz jede reelle Zahl
eine Dezimalbruchentwickelung hat?” (“Does every real number have a
decimal expansion?”) (1921), “Intuitionistischer Beweis des
Fundamentalsatzes der Algebra” (“Intuitionist proof of the fundamental
theorem of algebra”) (1924),8 and “Beweis dass jede volle Funktion
gleichmässig stetig is” (“Proof that every full function is uniformly
7
Ibid. Hilbert refers here to Kronecker’s “dictatorial prohibitions” of everything
that was not for him an integer.
8
This paper was written together with his Ph. D. student B. de Loor. It presents an
intuitionistic proof of the fundamental theorem of algebra, which states that every
algebraic equation ‫ ݔ‬௡ ൅ ܽ௡ିଵ ‫ ݔ‬௡ିଵ ൅ ‫ ڮ‬൅ ܽଵ ‫ ݔ‬൅ ܽ଴ ൌ Ͳ, with complex
coefficients, has a complex solution. The problem with the usual proofs of this
theorem, beginning with Gauss, was that they proceed by reductio ad absurdum
and so they were not admissible from the intuitionistic standpoint.
continuous” (1924), where he proves that every function mapping the

closed unit interval ሼ‫ א ݎ‬Թǣ Ͳ ൑ ‫ ݎ‬൑ ͳሽ into Թ is uniformly continuous.9
Beside the above-mentioned papers, Brouwer published many other
noteworthy papers aiming to reconstruct mathematics from the
intuitionistic standpoint.
After his conferences in Hamburg and Copenhagen in 1921, Hilbert
lectured again on the foundations of mathematics in a meeting of the
Society of German Scientist and Doctors that was held in Leipzig on
September 1922. The conference, entitled “Die logischen Grundlagen der
Mathematik” (“The Logical Foundations of Mathematics”), was published
the following year in Mathematische Annalen. In June 1925, the same
month in which Klein died, Hilbert took advantage of the occasion offered
by the Weierstrass-Woche (Weierstrass-Week) in Münster to give a lecture
titled “Über das Unendliche” (“On the Infinite”), which would also be
published the following year in Mathematische Annalen. Finally, in July
1927, Hilbert delivered the talk “Die Grundlagen der Mathematik” (“The
Foundations of Mathematics”) at the University of Hamburg. In these
conferences, Hilbert continued to present his program for the foundation
of mathematics. In addition to Hilbert and Bernays, his closest
collaborator, other important mathematicians were involved in technical
work on the program throughout the 1920s and 1930s.
Weyl, in turn, submitted in 1923 and published the following year in
the journal Mathematische Zeitschrift, a paper entitled “Randbemerkungen
zu Hauptproblemen der Mathematik” (“Marginal notes on the main
problems of mathematics”) (1924). In this paper, Weyl reacted to Hilbert’s
paper of 1921, but also clarified some of his ideas regarding the
intuitionist position on mathematical existence and substantially modified
his initial position toward Brouwer’s Intuitionism. Apart from the papers
of 1921 and 1923, Weyl contributed or referred to the debate on two more
occasions. The first was in the paper “Die heutige Erkenntnislage in der
Mathematik” (“The current epistemological situation in mathematics”)
(1925) and his subsequent extension Philosophie der Mathematik und
Naturwissenschaft (Philosophy of mathematics and natural science)
(1927), where he espoused the state of the art of the controversy on
foundational issues, discussing both intuitionism and formalism. The next
occasion was in 1927, during the seminar talk in Hamburg in which
Hilbert delivered his lecture on the foundations of mathematics mentioned
above. In his lecture, Hilbert had attacked intuitionism, and Weyl took
9
This result is often called Brouwer’s Theorem and follows from it that (in
intuitionistic mathematics) every function from Թ to Թ is continuous.
upon himself the defence of Brouwer’s intuitionism and particularly of its

role in connection with Hilbert’s program.10
From 1924 the debate extended beyond the initial group of directly
involved: Brouwer, Weyl, Hilbert and Bernays and to a less extent,
Fraenkel, Wolff, Finsler, Becker and Baldus. Not only did the number of
persons involved in the controversy increase but also the languages and
countries involved. In particular, the debate was brought to the English
and French reading public by Arnold Dresden (1882-1954) and Rolin
Wavre (1896-1949) respectively. For the new mathematicians and
philosophers involved in the debate or presenting positive or negative
results regarding the issues touched upon in the debate it is worth
mentioning, among the most prominent ones, John von Neumann, Kurt
Grelling (1886-1942), Andrey Kolmogorov (1903-1987), Arendt Heyting
(1898-1980), Valerii Glivenko (1896-1940) and Thoralf Skolem.
From 1928 onward, the foundational debate remitted significantly. In
1928, for the first time since 1922, the number of contributions to the
debate dropped. That was also the year when the events that led to the
definitive isolation of Brouwer and the loss of his influence were
precipitated. After the war, the Conseil International de Recherches,
created following the Treaty of Versailles, had instituted a boycott policy
towards German scientists that prevented them from having any
international contact. So, when in 1926 the Council abolished the
paragraph that boycotted German scientists, mathematicians from
Göttingen, headed by Hilbert, saw no disadvantage in accepting the
invitation to participate in the Eighth International Congress of
Mathematicians which was to be held in Bologna two years later. In
contrast to this attitude, most mathematicians from the universities of
Berlin and Munich opposed this participation, arguing that the congress
was linked to the International Mathematical Union and the International
Research Council, which were still hostile to German scientists. The
leader of this group of nationalist mathematicians, Ludwig Bieberbach
(1886-1982), a Berlin professor who would later be known for his
persecution of Jewish mathematicians during Nazism, sent a letter to
German high school teachers and university professors asking them to
boycott the conference. Brouwer, who had a fluid contact with the
University of Berlin (which had offered him a post in 1919 that he politely
declined), supported Bieberbach in a circular published in Mathematische
Annalen.
10
See “Diskussionsbemerkungen zu dem zweiten Hilbertschen Vortrag über die
Grundlagen der Mathematik” (“Comments on Hilbert’s Second Lecture on the
Foundations of Mathematics”) (1927).
Hilbert responded with another letter in which he criticized

Bieberbach’s attitude and called for participation in the congress as an “act
of the most elemental courtesy.” Finally, in August 1928, Hilbert headed
the German delegation, the second most numerous with up to 67
mathematicians, in the International Congress of Mathematicians at
Bologna. At the opening session of the Congress, Hilbert spoke eloquently
to the attendees:
It makes me very happy that after a long, hard time all the mathematicians
of the world are represented here. That is as it should be and as it must be
for the prosperity of our beloved science. Let us consider that we as
mathematicians stand on the highest pinnacle of the cultivation of the exact
sciences. We have no other choice than to assume this highest place,
because all limits, especially national ones, are contrary to the nature of
mathematics. It is a complete misunderstanding of our science to construct
differences according to people and races, and the reasons for which this
has been done are very shabby ones. Mathematics knows no races […] For
mathematics the whole cultural world is a single country.11
This was not the only battle lost by Brouwer in 1928. That was also the
year in which an unpleasant conflict, the so-called Annalenstreit, took
place in the editorial board of the Mathematische Annalen. Shortly after
his return from Bologna, Hilbert sent a short letter to Brouwer in which he
informed him of his dismissal from the editorial board of the journal. The
only reason given by Hilbert was that he could not continue to work with
him because of the incompatibility of their points of view on fundamental
issues. With this Hilbert referred to the hostile position towards foreign
mathematicians that Brouwer had expressed in his editorial work in the
journal (for example, he had opposed the participation of some French
mathematicians in the special issue dedicated to Riemann) and to his
opposition to the participation of the German mathematicians in the
Bologna Congress. In the same letter, Hilbert also informed Brouwer that
he had the authorization of Blumenthal and Carathéodory to retire his
name from the next number of the journal, since its permanence in the
editorial board was not appropriate for the reasons mentioned.
At the time of Hilbert’s letter, the chief editors of the journal were
Hilbert, Einstein, Blumenthal and Carathéodory, while the editorial board
was formed by Bieberbach, Bohr, Brouwer, Courant, Walther von Dyck
(1856-1934), Otto Hölder (1859-1937), von Kármán and Sommerfeld.
Hilbert also wrote to Einstein, in order to ask for his support for the
dismissal of Brouwer, but Einstein preferred to stay neutral in this “frog
11
Curbera 2009, 83.
and mouse battle among mathematicians” (as he described it). Meanwhile,

most members of the editorial board did not want to irritate Hilbert by
objecting to his design. Finally, after an intense and bitter exchange of
letters and meetings among the actors of this little tragedy (including the
owner of the journal, Ferdinand Springer), the name of Brouwer was
removed from the editorial board of the Mathematische Annalen.
Actually, the Bologna affair and Brouwer’s attitude towards foreign
mathematicians seems to have been just an excuse and that the true reason
for Brouwer’s illegal dismissal was that Hilbert, believing that he was
about to die, wanted to be sure that after his death Brouwer would not be
too influential in the journal.12 Brouwer vehemently protested his
dismissal and, in the end, the whole editorial board was dissolved and re-
assembled immediately in a very small format, with Hilbert as the sole
editor in chief and Blumenthal and Hecke as members of the editorial
board. In particular, Einstein and Carathéodory resigned their positions as
chief editors of the journal.
Brouwer’s intellectual and personal feud with Hilbert, together with his
incapability of creating a group of disciples that continued his work and
the lack of recognition of his contributions, left Brouwer bitter and
isolated, and put an end to a very creative decade in his work. He
abandoned his Intuitionist Programme and withdrew into silence. The
paper “Intuitionistische Betrachtungen über den Formalismus”
(“Intuitionist Reflections on Formalism”) (1928) and the Vienna lectures,
“Mathematik, Wissenschaft und Sprache” (“Mathematics, Science and
Language”) (1928) and Die Struktur des Kontinuums (The structure of the
continuum) (1930), mark the end of Brouwer’s creative work and of his
intuitionist campaign.
Although from 1928 the foundational crisis was over, there were still
important events related to the debate and contributions to some of the
issues touched on in the debate which are worth mentioning. In September
of 1930 the second Tagung für Erkenntnislehre der exakten
Wissenschaften (Conference on the epistemology of the exact sciences)
took place in Königsberg. The main theme of the conference was the
foundations of mathematics and for the first time the three big currents in
the philosophy of mathematics were represented in one and the same
meeting: formalism was represented by John von Neumann, intuitionism
by Arendt Heyting, and logicism by Rudolf Carnap. Regarding the later
contributions to the debate, they were usually concrete realizations of the
intuitionist or formalist program, looking sometimes for a middle way
12
Hilbert was indeed seriously ill at that time, but recovered and did not die until
1943.
between them, rather than philosophical discussions about the topics dealt
with in the debate. Among such contributions, are worth mentioning the
formalization of intuitionist logic (Heyting), its relationship with classical
logic (Gödel) and the relation among consistency, satisfiability and
existence (again Gödel).
Fig. 18-1 Brouwer (right) and Bohr at the International Mathematical Congress,
Zürich 1932.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE FOUNDATIONS OF QUANTUM MECHANICS
On November 9, 1918, just before First World War ended, Kaiser Wilhelm
II abdicated and fled to the Netherlands where he was protected by Queen
Wilhelmina. A new democratic government of Germany was declared in
February 1919 in the small town of Weimar. The so-called Weimar
Republic was faced from its beginnings with outrageous difficulties: the
enormous reparation payments to the Allied powers, a high rate of
unemployment and inflation completely out of control generated political
instability and a generalized sensation of confusion. However, beginning
in 1924, the overall situation began to improve and the period until 1929,
when the great depression began, became known as the Golden Age.
The feelings of the Göttingen academic staff and, particularly Hilbert,
were not that different from that of the rest of German academics:
The shock of defeat at the end of the First World War left many German
academics dumbfounded and numb. Even Hilbert, an outspoken
internationalist, was deeply disillusioned by the chaos and instability that
plagued the early Weimar years.1
Indeed, during the Weimar era Göttingen was “one of the strongest
outposts of support of the National Socialist Worker Party” and “in
national elections, the Nazis always fared far better in Göttingen than in
the state of Prussia at large.”2 Sympathy for the Nazis was also the
majority feeling among the student organizations and the politically active
professors.
The fraternal organizations that dominated student life in Gottingen had a
long history of anti-Semitism and were known for their reactionary
politics. When the Prussian Minister of Culture, Carl Heinrich Becker,
brought out a constitution for a National Student Union that made
discrimination by race and religion illegal, 86 percent of the Gottingen
student body voted against it. Rather than accept a Student Union in which
1
Rowe 2018, 315.
2
Ibid., 323.
182 Chapter Nineteen
Jews and other undesirables would be granted free access, they evidently
preferred to have none at all. Five years later the Nazis founded their own
student organization in Gottingen in 1926; they had attained an absolute
majority in the student congress. This shift to the right largely met with the
approval of the Gottingen faculty, as its members too had strong leanings
in this direction. Although they were not as radical as the students, most of
those who were politically active belonged to the two traditional parties of
the right: the German National Peoples’ Party (DNVP) and the German
Peoples’ Party (DVP).3
The Göttingen Philosophical Faculty was composed of two Sparten

(divisions)௅the mathematical-scientific division and the philological-
historical division௅which until 1922 voted together on matters that
affected the faculty as a whole. In most cases this system functioned quite
well, since the concerns of one group were usually a matter of indifference
to the other group. But even before the war, controversies between the two
Sparten arose that ultimately made this arrangement untenable. These
conflicts were mainly due to the different ideological and political biases
dominating each of the Sparten: conservative and right-wing in the
humanist section, liberal and internationalist in the mathematics and
natural science division.
Two instances of such conflicts concerned the habilitation of Leonard
Nelson and Emmy Noether that are dealt with elsewhere (see Chapter 15
and Chapter 21 respectively). Another instance was the appointment of the
physicist Johannes Stark (1874-1957) to the chair in experimental physics
at Göttingen. Stark was a Göttingen fellow: In 1900 he habilitated in
physics at Göttingen and over the following years he taught and
researched at the Göttingen Institute of Physics. It was also here where in
1905 he discovered the optical Doppler effect in canal rays for which he
received the Nobel Prize in 1919. Although his scientific credentials were
superior to those of his competitors and he had the support of the right-
wing physicists Wilhelm Wien and Philipp Lenard (1862-1947), Hilbert
opposed the appointment because he was a volkisch nationalist and
declared anti-Semite and this made him unacceptable for the position.
After Debye came to accept Hilbert’s view, nobody was in a position to
oppose Hilbert’s refusal and Stark was never called to occupy the chair in
experimental physics at the Georgia Augusta.
The overall liberal and internationalist atmosphere of the Göttingen
mathematical community was no accident:
3
Rowe 1986, 445-46.
The Foundations of Quantum Mechanics 183
As one of the world’s leading centers for mathematics and physics,

Gottingen attracted students and scholars, many of whom became world-
renowned; many among them were women, foreigners, or Jews. Certainly
there was no deliberate policy behind this௅much less an international
Jewish conspiracy, as Hugo Dingler would have it. But then neither was it
entirely an accident. It was, to a large extent, the indirect result of a
principle that Felix Klein had followed from the beginning of his career, a
principle that knew only one criterion for evaluating a mathematician’s
worth௅talent. These are only some of the events and circumstances that can
be cited in support of the thesis that the Gottingen scientific community
was a true phenomenon of Weimar culture.4
At the beginnings of the twenties, Hilbert continued to offer lectures on

the theory of relativity but his interests on physical issues shifted over to
quantum mechanics. In 1913 Niels Bohr had presented his theory of the
atomic structure and set the basis of what would later be called old
quantum theory. Since its beginnings in 1913, Bohr’s atomic theory had
been followed in Göttingen, particularly by Courant and Hilbert, who
invited Bohr to lecture at the seminar for mathematics and physics under
the auspices of the Wolksfehl Foundation. The lectures were held between
11 and 22 June 1922 and they become a momentous event for science.
About one hundred people attended the lectures and participated in the
event, which soon came to be called the Bohr Festspiele (Bohr Festival).
Among the attendees were the most prominent physicists and
mathematicians of the moment: Courant, Hilbert, Runge, Born,
Sommerfeld, Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958), Werner Heisenberg (1901-
1976), Pascual Jordan (1902-1980), Paul Ehrenfest (1880-1933), James
Franck (1882-1964), Hans Kramers (1894-1952) and Alfred Landé (1888-
1976), among others. The Bohr lectures showed the limitations of the
Bohr-Sommerfeld old quantum theory and had a decisive influence on the
development of quantum theory in Göttingen, particularly in the future
research of young physicists like Heisenberg and Pauli, but also for Born
and his group of collaborators and even for Hilbert.
After Debye left Göttingen in 1920, the three chairs in physics had to
be refilled. The vacancies were filled by the theoretician Max Born and the
experimental physicists James Franck and Robert Pohl (1884-1976). Early
in the 1920’s, the institutions related to physics (mainly the astronomic
observatory, the geophysical institute and the institute for applied
mathematics and mechanics) were reorganized into four institutes: two
experimental, a theoretical one, and an upgraded Institute for Applied
Electricity under Max Reich’s (1874-1941) direction. Also, in 1925, a new
4
Ibid., 448.
Institute for Fluid Dynamics was established under the direction of

Ludwig Prandtl.
The reorganization and establishment of new institutes was made
possible thanks to the financial support of funding organizations that
promoted scientific research through Germany. This was the case of the
Helmholtz Foundation, the Notgemeinschaft (which later became the DFG,
the German Research Foundation), the Kaiser Wilhelm Foundation and the
Rockefeller Foundation, which financed the new Mathematical Institute.
Thus, at the end of the twenties Göttingen had acquired a much greater
size and became a world-wide reference centre for the study and research
of applied and theoretical physics.
Although most of Hilbert’s efforts at the beginnings of the twenties
were taken up by the realization of his program for the foundations of
mathematics, he was still seriously engaged with the foundations of
physics and continued lecturing on this topic. However, as explained in
Chapter 16, these lectures and talks usually followed a more
comprehensive and philosophical approach. Of this kind were, for
instance, the talk given in Copenhagen (“Nature and Mathematical
knowledge”) in 1921 and a series of three lectures (entitled
“Epistemological questions of Modern Physics”) given in the University
of Hamburg in 1923.
Beginning in 1922, Hilbert’s assistant for physics was Lothar
Nordheim (1899-1985), who like the other assistants for physics was
chosen for Hilbert by Sommerfeld. When he arrived in Göttingen, he
hadn’t yet finished his degree on physics in Munich, so he had to combine
his work as Hilbert’s assistant with the preparation of his dissertation
under the supervision of Max Born. For the winter semester of 1922/23,
surely stimulated by the Bohr Wolksfehl lectures of that summer, Hilbert
announced a lecture course entitled “Mathematical Foundations of
Quantum Theory.” The lecture notes presented old quantum theory and
were worked out by Nordheim and Gustav Heckmann (1898-1996), a
physicist graduated from Göttingen who also wrote his dissertation under
the supervision of Born.5
On January 23, 1922, when the great debate on the foundations of
mathematics between intuitionists and formalists that dominated the
5
After attending a conference by Leonard Nelson at the Pedagogical Society in
Göttingen on the Socratic method in December 1922, he became progressively
interested in philosophy and pedagogy. He is also known for being the instigator of
the so called “Urgent Call for Unity” from 1932, one of the last attempts by
intellectuals of the time (e.g., Albert Einstein, Käthe Kollwitz and others) to
prevent the takeover of power by Hitler and the Nazis.
mathematical scene of the 20s had just begun, Hilbert turned 60. To
celebrate the event, the journal Die Naturwissenschaften dedicated one of
its issues to him, and several of his former students wrote about his life
and his contributions to the different fields of mathematics in which he had
worked: algebra, geometry, analysis, mathematical physics and philosophy
of mathematics. Likewise, a party in his honour was held in Göttingen,
where Klein, who was 73 years old and wheelchair-bound, and much of
the circle of former students and collaborators of Hilbert were present. The
party was largely the passing from the old generation of mathematicians,
headed by Klein and Hilbert, to a new batch in which Richard Courant
would play a very important role as the successor of Klein.
That year, the conflicts between the two divisions of the Faculty of
Philosophy led to its final breakup and the separation of the Mathematical-
Scientific Faculty from the Philosophical Faculty. In the wake of these
events the Mathematical Institute of Göttingen, the great dream of Klein,
was founded. The foundation was however more nominal than anything
else, given that its construction did not begin until 1927 and it was not
completed until 1929. Courant, Hilbert and Landau became directors of
the Institute, but it was Courant who took over the main workload of
management until 1933. Another mathematician whom Klein and Hilbert
wanted in Göttingen was Hermann Weyl, who was then in his thirties like
Courant. Weyl, however, despite the estimation and reverence he felt for
Klein and Hilbert, refused the invitation because he could not afford “to
exchange the tranquillity of life in Zürich for the uncertainties of post-war
Germany.”6
Fig. 19-1 The Mathematical Institute at Bunsenstrasse, 3-5, inaugurated on

3.12.1929
6
Reid 1970, 161.
Despite the problems that Germany was experiencing in the early 1920s,
particularly the galloping inflation, the University of Göttingen was slowly
recovering much of its splendour. Major mathematicians such as Harald
Bohr and Godfrey Hardy often visited Göttingen and new talented
mathematicians, such as Carl Ludwig Siegel (1896-1981), arrived.
Mathematical research was more alive than ever and important groups of
researchers were formed around Courant, Landau and Noether.
Fig. 19-2 Richard Courant in a lecture, 1932
Another important research group was also setting up around Max Born,
who was appointed to the chair of theoretical physics in 1921. The first
assistants of Born were none less than Wolfgang Pauli and Werner
Heisenberg. At the same time, Born’s best friend, James Franck, joined
Göttingen as a professor of experimental physics. The seminar on the
structure of matter, which during the war had been directed by Hilbert and
Debye, was now carried by Born and Franck, and among the attendees
over the 1920s we can find some of the most prominent physicists of the
last century; these include Heisenberg and Pauli, Robert Oppenheimer
(1904-1967), Karl Taylor Compton (1887-1954), Pascual Jordan, Paul
Dirac (1902-1984), Linus Pauling (1901-1994), Fritz Houtermans (1903-
1966) and Patrick Blackett (1897-1974), among others.
Lothar Nordheim worked with Hilbert at his home. During the period
he was Hilbert’s assistant he helped him prepare his lecture notes on
physics and explained the latest developments in physics, particularly in
quantum mechanics, to him. He was indeed not very happy with this
appointment and when he left his position as Hilbert’s assistant he felt
somewhat relieved:
First I must say, that during the time I was his assistant, he was very sick.
And not the genius he had been. He lived very much in the past in a way.
His mathematical interest was logic, which was not terribly appealing to
me. But he had the conviction that the best thing for a young man was to
work with him. That was a reward in itself. And everything else, financial
and family considerations, would be way down in importance.7
Although Hilbert barely participated in the seminar and discussions about

the latest advances in physics, his influence was still felt greatly due to the
publication of two important books. The first was Max von Laue’s book
Das Relativitätsprinzip of 1921.8 This was the first detailed exposition of
the general theory of relativity and, as recognized by the author, it made
ample use of Hilbert’s lecture notes on general relativity of 1916/17. The
second was the 1924 book Methoden der mathematischen Physik
(Methods of Mathematical Physics) by Hilbert and Courant, a classic work
and the most referenced of modern physics. The book was written entirely
by Courant, but, as he explained in the preface, Hilbert’s name on the
cover of the book was fully justified by the fact that much of the material
of the book came from lecture courses and talks given by Hilbert. The
book represented a formidable tool for classical theoretical physicists, who
from now on could find in a single book all the mathematics necessary for
their investigations, however advanced they might be. But the book by
Courant and Hilbert and, ultimately, Hilbert’s contributions to the theory
of integral equations, still had a broader scope of application that would
7
Interview of Lothar Nordheim by Bruce Wheaton on 1977 July 24, Niels Bohr
Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD USA,
www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/5074.
8
Das Relativitätsprinzip. Zweiter Band: Die allgemeine Relativitätstheorie und
Einsteins Lehre von der Schwerkraft. Braunschweig: Vieweg.
make it an indispensable tool for the future development of quantum

mechanics. As remarked by Constance Reid:
The Courant-Hilbert book on mathematical methods of physics, which had
appeared at the end of 1924, before both Heisenberg’s and Schrödinger
work, instead of being outdated by the new discoveries, seemed to have
been written expressly for the physicists who now had to deal with them.
Hilbert’s own work at the beginning of the century on integral equations,
the theory of eigenfunctions and eigenvalues of 1903-04 and the theory of
infinitely many variables of 1905-06, turned out to be the appropriate
mathematics for quantum mechanics (as was first established by Born in a
joint paper with Heisenberg and Jordan).9
Apart from Nordheim, who often visited Hilbert at home, was a young
mathematician of Hungarian origin, John von Neumann, who had studied
in Berlin with Erhard Schmidt, another of Hilbert’s students and a key
actor in the theory of integral equations. In 1924, von Neumann was only
21 years old and was deeply interested in Hilbert’s axiomatic approach to
physics and his proof theory. Between Hilbert and von Neumann there was
an age difference of more than forty years, but they spent long hours
discussing physics or the foundations of mathematics at Hilbert’s home.
However, the most intimate assistant and collaborator of Hilbert during
those years was still Bernays, who according to Nordheim “was
completely taken up by him.”10
In 1925 Felix Klein died, and with his death a golden age for
mathematics at Göttingen was also beginning to languish. That same year
Runge retired and his place was occupied by Gustav Herglotz. Hilbert,
who was 63 years, was diagnosed with pernicious anaemia, an illness that
was considered generally mortal at that time. But Hilbert was lucky that a
treatment for pernicious anaemia was just beginning to be experimentally
tested in the United States. So, through the many contacts of all kinds that
Hilbert had at that time, it was possible to get the miraculous drug in
Göttingen and, after a brief time, Hilbert’s general state improved
ostensibly.
In 1925 it was also the year in which the events that would bring in a
few years to the definitive mathematical formulation of quantum
mechanics were precipitated. That year Werner Heisenberg, who was then
the assistant of Max Born, brought him an article in which he eliminated
the electron orbits with defined radii and periods of rotation because they
were not observable and insisted that the theory be elaborated from tables
9
Reid 1970, 182.
10
Interview of Lothar Nordheim. See note 7 for a complete reference.
or matrices of a certain type. Heisenberg thought that this mathematical

formulation of quantum mechanics was one of the things that had to be
improved, but in fact it was his greatest discovery. Born quickly identified
Heisenberg’s mathematics with matrix algebra and called Pascual Jordan,
who had been one of Courant’s assistants in the preparation of Hilbert’s
book on mathematical physics, to help him.
Just sixty days after Heisenberg had brought Born his paper, an
important article signed by Born and Jordan appeared, in which they gave
a rigorous mathematical formulation of the matrix mechanics of
Heisenberg and established the most important principles of quantum
mechanics and its application to thermodynamics. A sequel of this article,
written by Born, Heisenberg and Jordan, was published next year (1926).
That same year, Born’s studies on the statistical interpretation of quantum
mechanics, for which he would receive the coveted Nobel Prize in
Physics, were published.
The first of four papers on wave mechanics that Erwin Schrödinger
(1887-1961) would write and publish in the first-half of 1926 appeared a
few months after the publication of Heisenberg’s paper on matrix
mechanics. Although the matrix and wave mechanics afforded the same
results, they started from different assumptions and used different
mathematical methods, so that the physicists were astonished. The first to
raise the question of the relationship between matrix and wave mechanics
was Schrödinger himself, who published an article in the spring of 1926
(which appeared between the second and third articles of the
aforementioned four) which contained an outline of a proof of the
mathematical equivalence of both theories, but not a rigorous one.
Hilbert was immediately interested in the subject and asked Nordheim
to instruct him about the new developments in quantum mechanics. In the
spring of 1926 Hilbert announced his second course on quantum
mechanics, which would take the title “Mathematical methods of quantum
theory.” As explained by Tilman Sauer in the Introduction to the recent
edition of Hilbert’s lecture course by Springer:
The course of 1926/27 was held immediately after the development of the
“new quantum mechanics” by Werner Heisenberg, Max Born, Pascual
Jordan, Erwin Schrödinger, Paul Dirac, and others. It contains all the
known new results, e.g. Heisenberg’s original approach leading to “matrix
mechanics,” Schrödinger “wave mechanics” and their application to the
harmonic oscillator, the rigid rotation and the hydrogen atom. Further
topics are perturbation theory, Fermi-Dirac vs. Bose-Einstein statistics, the
ideal quantum gas, the Klein-Gordon equations, the probability interpretation
of Schrödinger wave function by Born, and Pascual Jordan’s

axiomatization of the new theory.11
Thus, Hilbert’s course offered a comprehensive and fully updated vision

of the new quantum theory. When Hilbert began lecturing, in October
1926, important results had already been achieved in this field using both
the matrix and the wave method, but the mathematical equivalence
between the two methods was not yet established. Hilbert would declare in
the inaugural session of the course that the discipline was still in an
immature state, but that he was convinced that this situation would soon
improve. And that really happened. Shortly afterwards, Dirac and Jordan
independently provided a unification of the two mechanics, although their
approach made an essential use of the delta functions, which were not yet
considered a rigorous mathematical concept.
In his 1926 paper “Über eine neue Begründung der Quantenmechanik”
(“On a new Foundation of Quantum Mechanics”), Jordan had proposed an
axiomatic foundation of quantum mechanics which was aimed at showing
the underlying common thread of the various approaches to quantum
theory. At the time Jordan was a researcher in the Institut fur theoretische
Physik, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1924 and became Privatdozent in
1926. Hilbert adopted the axioms proposed by Jordan for quantum
mechanics at the end of the course and, despite explicitly attributing merit
to Jordan, he added that this had been done “according to the principles
and following the approach which I applied a generation ago to the
foundations of geometry.”12
Hilbert’s latest publication in the field of physics was an article signed
by Nordheim, von Neumann and Hilbert entitled “Über die Grundlagen
der Quantenmechanik” (“On the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics”),
which was published in Mathematische Annalen in 1927. The article was
largely based on Hilbert’s lectures of 1926/27 and adopted, with small
modifications, the axiomatic approach of Dirac and Jordan based on the
Delta functions. At the end of the article the authors acknowledged that
their presentation of the new quantum theory was temporary and
unsatisfactory and that more work was needed to complete it. The person
in charge of carrying out this work was precisely von Neumann, who
published, when he was only twenty-three years old, three papers in which
he provided his famous axiomatization of quantum mechanics and a
completely rigorous mathematical proof of the equivalence between
matrix and wave mechanics.
11
Hilbert 2009, 505.
12
Hilbert 1926-27, 204 (cited by Corry 2004, 417).
The papers that von Neumann published between 1927 and 1929
culminated in his great work Mathematische Grundlagen der
Quantenmechanik (Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics) of
1932, which is still a reference work for the study of the mathematical
structure of elemental quantum mechanics. For the description of this
structure, von Neumann defined the abstract concept of Hilbert space, of
which only a few specific examples were previously known (see Chapter
12). Instead of formulating the mathematical structure of quantum
mechanics from the Delta functions of Dirac, von Neumann did it from the
axiomatic theory of Hilbert spaces and the linear operators over them.
The previous example shows once again the influence of Hilbert in the
formulation of a revolutionary physical theory such as quantum
mechanics. This influence was given not so much by his participation,
more or less directly, in the research that would lead to the definitive
mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics, as by his mastery
through the seminars, talks and courses in Göttingen where he provided
the basic concepts and tools that would make this formulation possible: his
theory of integral equations, his work in what would later be called Hilbert
spaces and, last but not least, his axiomatic approach to the foundations of
physics.
CHAPTER TWENTY
HILBERT’S PROGRAM AND

GÖDEL’S RESPONSE
Although throughout the decade of the twenties, Hilbert closely followed

the advances in the foundation of physics, the fact is that as of 1922 his
most relevant contributions took place in the field of the foundations of
mathematics. As we have already explained, Hilbert’s new proposal for
the foundation of mathematics, the so-called Hilbert program, was
developed in several lecture courses, conferences and articles throughout
the 1920s by Hilbert and his collaborators, particularly Bernays. So let us
take stock.
From 1917 to 1924 Hilbert taught a series of lecture courses which
reveal a profound revision of his views on logic and the foundations of
mathematics.1 In particular, the lecture courses of 1921/22, 1922/23 and
1923/24 show the development of Hilbert’s ideas concerning proof theory
and the finitist consistency program. The basic ideas of proof theory were
already outlined in the conferences held at Copenhagen and Hamburg in
the spring and summer of 1921. These were partially published in the
paper “Neubegründung der Mathematik” (“New Grounding of
Mathematics”) in 1922. However, it was in the lecture course “Grundlagen
der Mathematik” (“Foundations of Mathematics”), taught in the winter
semester of 1921/22, that the main tenets of Hilbert’s program were
assembled, namely, proof theory and the finitist consistency program. It
was, indeed, in these lectures that the terms “finite Mathematik,”
“transfinite Schlussweisen” and “Hilbertschen Beweistheorie” appeared
for the first time. Hilbert’s program was presented for the first time outside
Göttingen in a conference held in Leipzig in 1922, published the next year
with the title “Die logische Grundlagen der Mathematik.”
The main objective of Hilbert’s program was to offer a direct proof of
the consistency of analysis, since this would solve once and for all the
problem of the foundation of classical mathematics. The problem of the
1
See Chapter 17, n. 2 for the list of these lecture courses.
194 Chapter Twenty
consistency of analysis was an issue that Hilbert had been considering

since the Heidelberg conference of 1904 and to which a fully satisfactory
solution should be found, especially after the devastating criticism
addressed by Poincaré to Hilbert’s proof of the consistency of the axioms
of arithmetic given in that talk (see Chapter 14). The problem for Hilbert
was that now he had to answer not only the charges of circularity launched
by Poincaré, but also Weyl and Brouwer’s objections to the use of the
actual infinite in set theory and classical analysis and, in particular, to the
use of the law of excluded middle in infinite domains.
As remarked by Hilbert in “Neubegründung der Mathematik,” to
answer the above objections and to “do full justice to the constructive
tendencies, to the extent that they are natural,”2 he adopted a new
philosophical perspective, later called by him the finitist position (finite
Einstellung). This finitist stance basically consisted of restricting
mathematical thinking only to “certain extra-logical objects, which exist
intuitively as an immediate experience before all thought”3 and to those
operations and methods of reasoning about these objects that do not
require the introduction of abstract concepts, especially the complete
infinite totalities.
More precisely stated, according to Hilbert, the objects that constitute
the domain of finitist mathematics are the signs (Zeichen). In the case of
arithmetic these signs are the numerals (Zahlzeichen) ͳǡ ͳͳǡ ͳͳͳǡ ǥ which
are usually represented by the signs ͳǡ ʹǡ ͵ǡ ǥ or also by the letters
ܽǡ ܾǡ ܿǡ ǥ Arithmetic operations acceptable from the finitist point of view
are those that are recursively defined, i.e., the sum or concatenation,
multiplication and exponentiation (from which subtraction and division are
defined as usual). The arithmetical statements acceptable from the finitist
standpoint are the equalities and inequalities between numerals (for
example: ʹ ് ͵, ܽ ൏ ܾ,ʹ ൅ ͵ ൌ ͷ, etc.), and the statements in which
basic decidable properties are attributed to the numerals (e.g.: “͵ is
prime”). Obviously, these atomic statements can be combined using the
standard logical operations: conjunction, disjunction, negation and
conditional, obtaining again finitist acceptable statements. Hilbert also
considered acceptable from the finitist point of view the so-called bounded
formulas, that is, statements of the type ‫ ݔ׊‬൏ ‫߮ݐ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ or ‫ ݔ׌‬൏ ‫߮ݐ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ,
where ‫ ݐ‬is a numeral and ߮ is a formula obtained by any of the procedures
described above. Thus, in the article “Über das Unendliche” (“On the
infinite”) (1925), Hilbert gave as an example of such quantificational
2
Ewald 1996, vol. 2, 1119.
3
Ibid., 1121.
Hilbert’s Program and Gödel’s Response 195
statements, the statement “there is a prime number between ‫ ݌‬and ‫݌‬Ǩ ൅ ͳ,”
where ‫ ݌‬represents the largest known prime number so far. This statement,
wrote Hilbert, “serves merely to abbreviate the proposition: Certainly
‫ ݌‬൅ ͳ or ‫ ݌‬൅ ʹ or ‫ ݌‬൅ ͵ or …‫݌‬Ǩ ൅ ͳ is a prime number,”4 which consists
of a finite number of disjunctions and is therefore decidable in a finite
number of steps.
The problematic statements from the finitist standpoint are the
unbounded quantificational statements, i.e., statements of the type ‫߮ݔ׊‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ
or ‫߮ݔ׌‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ whose range of quantification is all the numerals. For example,
the statement “there is a prime number larger than ‫݌‬,” where ‫ ݌‬is as
before, is not acceptable from the finitist standpoint. The reason is that this
statement says that there is a number greater than ‫݌‬, belonging to an
infinite totality of numbers, that is a prime number, but it is not sure that
we can find in a finite number of steps a number of the form ‫ ݌‬൅ ݊ that is
prime and obviously we cannot test all numbers greater than ‫ ݌‬to check
whether any of them is a prime number.
The universal statement “for every number ݊, ݊ ൅ ͳ ൌ ͳ ൅ ݊” is also a
problematic statement, because its negation, the statement “there exists a
number ݊ such that ݊ ൅ ͳ ് ͳ ൅ ݊,” is an existential statement whose
range is an infinite totality of numbers and, therefore, is not acceptable
from the finitist point of view. However, Hilbert considered universal
statements as the one above acceptable from the finitist standpoint,
provided that such statements would not be interpreted as an infinite
conjunction, “but only as a hypothetical judgment that comes to assert
something when a numeral is given.”5 Indeed, today all universal
statements whose particular instances express decidable properties of the
numerals are often regarded as acceptable from the finitist standpoint.
These statements can be expressed as formulas of the form ‫߰ݔ׊‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ, where
߰ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ is a bounded formula, which are characterized moreover by the fact
that their negation is also decidable (and thus, if they are false are refutable
in a finite number of steps).
In general, all quantificational statements over finite domains of
objects are acceptable from the finitist standpoint, while quantificational
statements over infinite domain of objects are problematic. The result is
that while the application of certain laws of classical logic is safe when
applied to finite totalities, its application to infinite totalities needs to be
justified. This is the case, for example, of the De Morgan laws for
quantificational statements, the equivalences ൓‫߮ݔ׊‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ‫ݔ׌ ؠ‬൓߮ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ and
4
5
Ibid., 378.
196 Chapter Twenty
൓‫߮ݔ׌‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ‫ݔ׊ ؠ‬൓߮ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ, since both the negation of the universal statement
‫߮ݔ׊‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ and that of the existential statement ‫߮ݔ׌‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ are not acceptable
from the finitist standpoint and, therefore, the above equivalences are not
even intelligible from this point of view. The same applies to the principle
of excluded middle, which states (in the version given by Hilbert) that
either all objects have a specific property or there is an object that does not
have this property, i.e., ‫߮ݔ׊‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ‫ݔ׌ ש‬൓߮ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ. Obviously, the principle of
excluded middle is trivial when applied to finite totalities of objects, since
we can always test all objects in the domain and see if they all have the
property in question or, conversely, if they do not have it. Nonetheless,
this is impossible when the domain is infinite, because we cannot test all
objects in the domain and, therefore, neither can we verify that they all
possess the property in question nor can we be sure to find something that
doesn’t possess it.
In any case, the previous transfinite modes of inference are constantly
used in analysis and set theory. Therefore, as stated by Hilbert in the
article “Die logische Grundlagen der Mathematik” (“The logical
Foundations of Mathematics”) (1923), “if we wish to give a rigorous
grounding of mathematics, we are not entitled to adopt as logically
unproblematic the usual modes of inference that we find in analysis.”6
Hilbert’s goal was not, however, to abandon these laws of classical logic
as did the intuitionist, for their use in analysis and set theory has always
led to correct results, but rather to justify their use in accordance with the
finitist stance adopted. As Hilbert wrote, “the free use and the full mastery
of the transfinite is to be achieved on the territory of the finite!”7 But how
is this possible if, as we have seen, Hilbert considered these transfinite
modes of inference as the precise point at which classical logic goes
beyond the limits acceptable from the finitist standpoint?
Hilbert’s answer was essentially to consider these transfinite modes of
inference as ideal statements, that is, as statements that are meaningless
from the finitist standpoint, but nevertheless should be added to the logical
theory in order to preserve the laws of classical logic. Hilbert’s basic idea
was that in the same way that imaginary numbers are introduced in
analysis to preserve the laws of algebra, for example, those concerning the
existence and number of roots of an equation, it was necessary to “adjoin
the ideal propositions to the finitary ones in order to maintain the formally
simple laws of ordinary Aristotelian logic.”8 This method of ideal elements
was subject to only one condition, namely, the proof of consistency, since
6
Ewald 1996, vol. 2, 1140.
7
Ibid.
8
Sketch of a finitist consistency proof

(“Neubegründung der Mathematik,” 1922)
The system considered by Hilbert includes the following five axioms:

1. ܽൌܽ
2. ܽ ൌܾ ՜ܽ൅ͳൌܾ൅ͳ
3. ܽ൅ͳൌܾ൅ͳ՜ܽ ൌܾ
4. ܽ ൌ ܿ ՜ ሺܾ ൌ ܿ ՜ ܽ ൌ ܾሻ
5. ܽ൅ͳ്ͳ
and modus ponens as the only deduction rule (which allows us to
deduce the formula ‫ ܤ‬from the formulas ‫ ܣ‬and ‫ ܣ‬՜ ‫)ܤ‬. A proof from
the previous axioms is defined as a sequence of finite length such that
for each formula of the sequence, either this formula is an axiom or is
obtained by replacing certain variables of a previous formula by other
variables or numerals or, finally, is obtained by modus ponens from
two previous formulas in the sequence. The last formula in the proof is
the proven formula or theorem. The axiom system just described is
consistent if an equation ߙ ൌ ߚ and its negation ߙ ് ߚ cannot be
simultaneously proved. To demonstrate this fact, Hilbert proves the
following two claims:
6. Every provable formula can contain up to two
occurrences of the symbol ՜.
7. An equation ߙ ൌ ߚ is provable if, and only if, ߙ and ߚ
have the same sign.
From these two lemmas, whose proofs do not pose too many problems,
Hilbert proves the consistency of the axioms 1-5 as follows: By
Lemma 7 all provable equations are of the form ߙ ൌ ߚ. Therefore, to
prove that the previous system is consistent we must show that no such
formula as ߙ ് ߚ is provable. To see this, let us remark first that no
such formula can be obtained by direct substitution from the axioms,
since only the axiom 5 allows us to infer inequalities by direct
substitution, but these inequalities are of the type ܽ ൅ ͳ ് ͳ.
Moreover, if we had derived a formula of this type by modus ponens, it
would have been necessary to have previously inferred a formula of the
form ‫ ܥ‬՜ ߙ ് ߚ. But since this formula could not have been obtained
by substitution from the axioms, it would in turn have required that we
had previously deduced a formula of type ‫ ܤ‬՜ ሺ‫ ܥ‬՜ ߙ ് ߚሻ, and this
formula, for the same reasons, would have required that we had
previously inferred a formula of the type ‫ ܣ‬՜ ൫‫ ܤ‬՜ ሺ‫ ܥ‬՜ ߙ ് ߚሻ൯.
But, by Lemma 6, such a formula is not provable because it contains
more than two occurrences of the sign ՜. It follows then that no such
formula as ߙ ് ߚ can be proven, as Hilbert wanted to prove.
198 Chapter Twenty
any domain’s extension with the addition of ideal elements is legitimate

only if it generates no contradiction in the smaller original domain.
Therefore, it must be demonstrated that in adding ideal propositions to the
finitist ones it is not possible to derive any contradiction in the original
domain of finite mathematics. Moreover, for this proof to be acceptable
for the intuitionist too, it must be carried out exclusively from the
statements and methods of reasoning acceptable from the finitist
standpoint. This was exactly the aim of Hilbert’s proof theory (Hilbertsche
Beweistheorie).
The basic idea of Hilbert’s proof theory was, first, to rigorously
formalize the whole edifice of mathematics, so that “mathematics proper
or mathematics in the strict sense becomes a stock of formulae”9 and,
secondly, to demonstrate the consistency of the formal system obtained in
the previous step using only the statements and methods of reasoning
acceptable from the finitist standpoint. In a formal system, the formulas
become a mere succession of signs, subject to certain rules of formation
and devoid of any meaning, while mathematical proofs become rows
(sequences of finite length) of formulas of the formal language, where
each formula of the sequence follows from the above according to certain
rules of transformation or inference. The advantage of working with a
formal system is that it allows, in principle, to demonstrate the consistency
of an axiomatic system from a purely syntactic perspective, i.e., using only
certain syntactic properties of the formulas and deductions of the formal
system in question.
As we have seen in the above sketch of a finitist consistency proof
carried out in “Begründung der Mathematik” (see the Textbox above),
Hilbert proved the consistency of axiomatic systems using only the
syntactic properties of formulas (e.g., the fact that the sign ՜ appears in a
provable formula more than twice) and proofs (e.g., the fact that if a
formula ‫ ܤ‬is obtained by modus ponens, then a formula of the type ‫ ܣ‬՜ ‫ܤ‬
must have been deduced previously) of the axiomatic systems. Naturally,
this is only possible if the concepts of formula and proof have been
precisely formulated, that is, if the axiomatic system has been rigorously
formalized. Moreover, reasoning over a formal language presupposes
considering this language as the object language of our research, while the
language through which we carry out this reasoning becomes a
metalanguage. For example, in the proof of consistency we have just seen,
Hilbert uses the letters ‫ܣ‬ǡ ‫ܤ‬ǡ ‫ܥ‬ǡ ǥ as meta-variables for the formulas of the
object language and ߙǡ ߚǡ ߛǡ ǥ as meta-variables for the terms.
9
Ewald 1996, vol. 2, 1137.
The distinction between language and metalanguage, or, as Hilbert put

it, between mathematics and metamathematics, allowed him to answer the
charges of circularity expressed by Poincaré and Brouwer about his proof
of consistency in the Heidelberg conference of 1904 by distinguishing
between contentual metamathematical induction and formal mathematical
induction. The first applies to formalized proofs, which are finite objects
concretely given, whereas the second applies to the infinite objects or
concepts to which these proofs refer. So there is no risk of circularity.
The above sketch of how the consistency proof of an axiom system
could proceed is very simple. However Hilbert outlined in the article “Die
logischen Grundlagen der Mathematik” the proof of the consistency of a
subsystem, without quantifiers, of elementary arithmetic from which, as he
himself says, “the elementary theory of numbers can also been obtained
[…] by means of “finite” logic and purely intuitive thought (which
includes recursion and intuitive induction for finite existing totalities).”10
The problem obviously arises when Hilbert begins to extend his proof
theory to set theory and analysis (the consistency proof of which is the
ultimate goal of the proof theory) because in this case the use of transfinite
modes of inference is inevitable.
To handle these transfinite modes of inference from a finitist point of
view, Hilbert introduced a special operator߬ (later substituted by its dual
ߝ), a choice function that associates to each predicate ‫ܣ‬ሺܽሻ with a variable
ܽ, a particular object ߬ሺ‫ܣ‬ሻ. The ߬ operator chooses for each predicate a
counterexample, that is, a negative representative of the property ‫ܣ‬. For
example, as Hilbert observed, if ‫ ܣ‬represents the predicate “corruptible,”
then ߬ሺ‫ܣ‬ሻ will be a man of such integrity that if he becomes corruptible,
then all men would be corruptible. So, this operator is governed by the
following transfinite axiom: ‫ܣ‬൫߬ሺ‫ܣ‬ሻ൯ ՜ ‫ܣ‬ሺܽሻ, that is, if ߬ሺ‫ܣ‬ሻ has the
property ‫ܣ‬, then every object has it too. Hilbert can now define the
quantifiers in terms of the ߬ operator, for it is clear that (i) if ߬ሺ‫ܣ‬ሻ has the
property ‫ܣ‬, then every object has the property ‫ ܣ‬and vice versa, that is,
‫ܣݔ׊‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ‫ܣ ؠ‬൫߬ሺ‫ܣ‬ሻ൯; and (ii) if ߬ሺ൓‫ܣ‬ሻ (in the example above: the man
with less integrity exists) verifies the property ‫( ܣ‬is corruptible), then there
is an object which satisfies ‫( ܣ‬a corruptible man) and vice versa, i.e.,
‫ܣݔ׌‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ‫ܣ ؠ‬൫߬ሺ൓‫ܣ‬ሻ൯. From the transfinite axiom and the previous
definitions of the universal and existential quantifiers follow almost
immediately the De Morgan laws for quantificational statements and the
principle of excluded middle for infinite totalities. Thus, the transfinite
10
Ibid., 1139.
200 Chapter Twenty
axiom allows Hilbert to eliminate quantifiers and, assuming that the

system obtained by adding this axiom is consistent, to extend the validity
of the laws of classical logic to infinite totalities and, therefore, justify the
common resource in classical mathematics to these transfinite modes of
inference (particularly the principle of excluded middle). Indeed, this
axiom greatly simplifies proof theory, for now a formalized proof shall
consist only of substitutions and applications of propositional calculus,
which in turn allows that the consistency proof of the formal system can
be carried out using only reasoning of a finite kind. Hilbert’s strategy was,
in effect, to replace the finitely many ߬-terms (or ߝ-terms) in any proof by
successively assigning numerical values to them by an effective procedure.
The hope was that this procedure could be shown to be completed in a
finite number of steps, so that only quantifier-free formulas were left
behind.
Hilbert reviewed the development of his finitist consistency program in
the address “Probleme der Grundlegund der Mathematik” (“Problems in
the Foundations of Mathematics”) at the inaugural session of the
International Congress of Mathematicians held in Bologna in September
of 1928. According to Hilbert, there were four problems that remained to
be solved to complete his ambitious program for the foundations of
mathematics: 1. Finitist proof of the consistency of analysis (second-order
function calculus). According to Hilbert, Ackermann had already carried
out the main part of the proof and only “an elementary theorem of
finiteness which is purely arithmetical” was left to prove. 2. Finitist proof
of the consistency of set theory (higher-order function calculi). Hilbert
mentions only those parts of set theory necessary for the development of
the classical mathematics of this time. 3. Proof of the completeness of the
axiom systems for number theory and analysis, where completeness is to
be understood here in a sense analogue to that of the Post-completeness of
the restricted function calculus. 4. Proof of the semantic completeness of
the system of axioms for the restricted function calculus, that is, proof that
all universally valid sentences are provable from the axioms and logical
rules of inference.
The problems posed by Hilbert aroused the interest of a young
Austrian logician, named Kurt Gödel, who was then only 22 years old.
Gödel had studied at the University of Vienna, where he had such
distinguished professors as the philosophers Heinrich Gomperz (1873-
1942), Moritz Schlick (1882-1936) and Rudolf Carnap, and the
mathematicians Philipp Furtwängler, Karl Menger (1902-1985) and Hans
Hahn (1879-1934). The latter would be his Doktorvater and would
introduce him to the group of philosophers and mathematicians formed
around Schlick, later known as the Wiener Kreis (Vienna Circle). Between
1926 and 1928 Gödel regularly participated in the meetings of the Circle
and it was there that he became acquainted with Russell’s logicist program
for the foundation of mathematics. In 1928 Gödel’s interest in logic and
the foundation of mathematics was further stimulated by the two
conferences offered by Brouwer in Vienna that year (“Mathematik,
Wissenchaft und Sprache” (“Mathematics, science and language”) and
“Die Struktur des Kontinums” (“The structure of the continuum”), as well
as his attendance at the course “The Philosophical Foundations of
Arithmetic” taught by Rudolf Carnap at the University of Vienna in the
winter semester of 1928/29.
Given the lively interest of the Vienna Circle in the problems of
foundations of mathematics, it is likely that Gödel knew the contents of
Hilbert’s conference very soon after it took place. In any case, it is sure
that Gödel had knowledge of it before 1931, since it is explicitly
mentioned in his famous article on the incompleteness of arithmetic of that
year.11 But what is worth mentioning is the fact that Gödel was able to
solve the four problems posed by Hilbert in the course of the two years
following the conclusion of the conference.
During the summer of 1929, Gödel demonstrated the semantic
completeness of first-order logic, thus solving Hilbert’s fourth problem
positively. In the summer of 1930, Gödel attacked the first problem posed
by Hilbert at the Bologna conference: the consistency of analysis. Gödel’s
idea was to first prove the (relative) consistency of analysis with respect to
number theory and then offer a direct proof of the (absolute) consistency
of the theory of numbers. To demonstrate the relative consistency of
analysis, Gödel considered the possibility of representing each real number
by means of a formula ߮ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ of the language of arithmetic. Gödel realized
then that “߮ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ is demonstrable” is definable in the language of arithmetic
and, therefore, that the concept of demonstrability is definable in
arithmetic. However, Gödel had known for some time now that the
concept of truth was not definable in arithmetic and that this was the
solution to the semantic paradoxes such as, for example, the liar paradox.
Therefore, the concept of demonstrability could not coincide with that of
truth and, in the event that all demonstrable formulas were true, then there
should be some true formula that was not demonstrable. Gödel then
11
We refer to the paper “Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia
mathematica und verwandter Systeme” (“On formally undecidable propositions of
Principia Mathematica and related systems”), received by the journal Monashefte
für Mathematik und Physik on Novembre 17, 1930, and published the following
year.
202 Chapter Twenty
constructed a sentence ‫ ݌‬of a formal system ܵ which says of itself that it is

not demonstrable in ܵ. Intuitively, ‫ ݌‬must be indemonstrable in ܵ and,
therefore, true. But if ܵ is not very strange, then ‫ ݌‬is not refutable in ܵ,
since it is true. Thus, Gödel discovered the existence of a sentence ‫ ݌‬of the
theory of numbers that is undecidable, thus demonstrating that this theory
is incomplete, solving the third problem of Hilbert in a negative way.
After announcing the previous result in the Second Congress on
Epistemology of Exact Sciences held in Königsberg in September of that
same year, Gödel improved and expanded the previous result, making ‫ ݌‬an
elegant arithmetical proposition and noting that any proposition of a
formal system ܵ that naturally expresses the consistency of this system can
also be used as the undecidable proposition in ܵ. Thus, any proof of the
consistency of ܵ can not be fully formalized in ܵ. In particular, the
proposition that expresses the consistency of formal number theory or
axiomatic set theory can be formalized in these systems and, therefore, it is
not possible to find a proof of their consistency formalizable in them.12
Therefore, since Hilbert’s finitist methods should be formalizable in these
systems, Gödel not only had demonstrated the impossibility of finding a
finite demonstration of the consistency of analysis and set theory
(problems 1 and 2 of Hilbert), but even of the theory of numbers (contrary
to Hilbert’s belief that it had already been found by Ackermann).
Gödel’s results were stunning and they annulled two basic convictions
of Hilbert, his firm belief that in mathematics there are no irresolvable
problems and his absolute confidence in the provability of the consistency
of mathematics. However, when we look at the influence of Gödel’s
results in mathematical practice in general, we find that although most
mathematicians are aware of the incompleteness of any minimally
interesting mathematical theory and, therefore, the theoretical possibility
that any problem in which they are working is unsolvable in this theory,
they do not stop working on this problem and trying to solve it. In other
words, Gödel’s incompleteness theorems have not undermined the
confidence of mathematicians in the resolution of mathematical problems
in general. In fact, as Hilbert said in the 1900 Paris conference, “this
conviction of the solvability of every mathematical problem is a powerful
incentive to the worker. We hear within us the perpetual call: There is the
problem. Seek its solution. You can find it by pure reason, for in
mathematics there is no ignorabimus.”13
12
These results constitute the core of the 1931 Gödel’s paper mentioned in the
previous note
13
Hilbert 1965, vol. 3, 298.
It is true, on the other hand, that Gödel’s incompleteness theorems,

insofar as they claim that no formal system with a minimal arithmetic
content can demonstrate its own consistency, clearly show the
impossibility of carrying out Hilbert’s consistency program. Because,
whatever be the system with which Hilbert could have identified finitist
mathematics, it is clear from Gödel’s results that it could not demonstrate
its own consistency and, much less, the consistency of whole mathematics.
However, it does not follow from the fact that theories such as, for
example, arithmetic, group theory or analysis cannot prove their
consistency that they are inconsistent. In addition, the concern for the
problem of consistency has now been substantially diminished and hardly
anyone doubts today that, say, arithmetic, group theory or analysis are
consistent. Moreover, in the past, all inconsistencies resulted from obvious
defects in the formulation of the axiomatic theories, and these defects have
been eliminated (this was the case, for instance, of set theory). Of course,
there may still be hidden flaws which we are not aware of, but none has
yet emerged, even after a huge amount of detailed research on these
systems.
In short, although it is true that Gödel’s theorems demolished the
Hilbertian project of demonstrating the consistency of the whole
mathematics and expressed certain inherent limitations of the axiomatic
method,14 this is still the paradigm of mathematical rigor and one of the
fundamental tools for the development of the different branches of
mathematics. One proof of this is the importance of the axiomatic ideal in
the development of modern algebra by Emmy Noether, Emil Artin and B.
L. van der Waerden among others, or in the group of French
mathematicians grouped under the pseudonym of Nicolas Bourbaki, topics
which we will discuss in the following chapters.
14
This not excludes, however, the possibility of partial realizations of Hilbert’s
program. Despite Gödel’s theorems, one can give a finitistic reduction for
substantial portions of infinitistic mathematics. See, for example, the paper by
Stephen Simpson (1945- ) “Partial realizations of Hilbert’s program,” in Journal of
Symbolic Logic, 53, no. 2(1988): 349-363.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE NOETHER SCHOOL AND THE

RISE OF MODERN ALGEBRA
There is no doubt that the central figure in the development of the modern
conception of algebra௅the link between Hilbert’s name and modern
algebra௅is Emmy Noether.1 Born in Erlangen (Bavaria, Germany), March
23, 1882, Emmy Noether was the daughter of the mathematician Max
Noether (1844-1921). From 1889 to 1897 she attended the Städtische
Höhere Töchterschule, the local public school for girls. In the spring of
1900, when she was eighteen, she sat and passed the examination to obtain
the certificate to teach French and English at girls’ schools. She wanted to
continue her studies at university level, but at that time German
universities did not allow women to enroll as regular students. Female
students were only admitted as Hospitanten (auditors), without acces to
final examinations and only with the consent of the professors whose
lectures they wished to attend.
In the winter semester of 1900/01, Noether was registered as auditor
for courses in language, history, and mathematics at Erlangen University.
She was one of only two women studying with 984 men. The next two
years she prepared for the Reifeprüfung, the national graduation exam that
entitled the graduate to enter a university of his choice, which she passed
in July 1903. She spent the winter semester of 1903/04 at the University of
Göttingen, where she attended as auditor the lectures of the astronomer
Karl Scwarzschild and the mathematicians Minkowski, Blumenthal, Klein
and Hilbert. After the first semester she returned to Erlangen, since its
university had changed its policies to admit women as regular students
with the same rights as men. Noether enrolled in the Philosophical Faculty
and in the next four years she only took mathematics courses. On
1
Most of the biographical information about Emmy Noether may be found in Dick
(1981). In it we can also find the “Obituary of Emmy Noether” by B. L. van der
Waerden (pp. 100-111), the memorial adress “Emmy Noether” by H. Weyl (pp.
112-152) and the adress “In Memory of Emmy Noether” by P. S. Alexandroff (pp.
153-179).
206 Chapter Twenty-One
December 13, 1907, she passed her doctoral oral examination and in July
2, 1908, her doctoral dissertation was registered. It was written under the
supervision of Paul Gordan, who was an old friend of her father, and dealt
with the theory of invariants.
Once Noether had completed the doctorate it would have been natural
for her to begin her academic career as Privatdozent at Erlangen. But this
possibility was vetoed for women, so from 1908 to 1915 she had to settle
for being an informal and unpaid member of the mathematics department,
where she continued her research and replaced her father when he was ill
in his classes at the university. In 1909 Noether presented the paper “Zur
Invariantentheorie der Formen von ݊ Variabeln” (“On the theory of
invariants for forms of ݊ variables”) at the DMV conference in Salzburg.
A revised account of it appeared in a paper of the same title in 1911 in the
Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik. In 1913 she presented
another paper, entitled “Rational Funktionenkörper” (“Fields of rational
functions”), at the DMV conference in Vienna. These two research papers
along with her doctoral dissertation established Noether’s reputation in
invariant theory.
In 1910 Gordan retired from his position as Ordinarius at Erlangen.
His immediate succesor, Erhard Schmidt, occupied his post for a short
time and was followed by Ernst Fischer. According to Weyl, it was under
the direction of Fischer that “the transition from Gordan’s formal
standpoint to the Hilbert method of approach was accomplished.”2 In
1915, Hilbert and Klein called Noether in Göttingen. At this time, Hilbert
was working on the mathematics of relativity theory and, as some
problems he encountered required a good knowledge of invariant theory,
he asked Noether to be his assistant. Thus, during the next four years,
Noether published nine articles on the theory of invariants related to the
theory of relativity. From 1920 onwards, she only wrote one paper on the
theory of invariants.
After Noether arrived in Göttingen, Hilbert and Klein tried to obtain a
lectureship for her. On November 9, 1915, as part of the formal process of
qualifying for Habilitation, Noether gave the lecture “Über ganze
tranzendentte Zahlen” (“On transcendental integers”) before the
Mathematical Society in Göttingen. The appointment was rejected,
however, by the Senate of the Philosophical Faculty, because according to
the rules concerning Privatdozenten of 1908, Habilitation could only be
granted to male candidates. The better-known story is that, against the
arguments contrary to the qualification of Noether expressed by the
2
Dick 1981, 123.
The Noether School and the Rise of Modern Algebra 207
philologists and historians of the Philosophical Faculty because of being a

woman, Hilbert replied: “I do not see that the sex of the candidate is an
argument against her admission as Privatdozent. After all, we are a
university, and not a bathing establishment.”3
Despite not obtaining the Habilitation, Noether became an active
member of the Division of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the
Philosophical Faculty and an intimate collaborator of Hilbert:
In the catalogue of lectures for the winter semester 1916/17 of the Georg-
August-University in Göttingen, we find the following listing:
“Mathematical-physical seminar. Theory of invariants: Prof. Hilbert, with
the assistance of Frl. Dr. E. Noether, Mondays 4-6 P.M., free of charge.”
From then on, this was a standing addition to all listings of Hilbert’s
seminars, problem sessions, and even main lectures, up to and including
the summer semester of 1919.4
In 1919, a year after the First World War had ended, Germany became a
Republic and the rights of women were improved (for example, they
acquired the right to vote). This opened for Noether the possibility of
Habilitation. On July 23, 1918, she had lectured before the Mathematical
Society on “Invariante variationsprobleme” (“Invariant variational
problems”). The final version of the lecture was published in 1918 in the
Göttinger Nachrichten and was considered her Habilitation thesis. On
May 21, 1919, the Habilitation request was approved and on June 4, 1919,
she defended her thesis before a court formed by Klein, Hilbert, Courant,
Landau and Debye. She was granted the venia legendi and became a
Privatdozentin, a position that allowed her to teach the students who
requested it. She was the first woman qualified for teaching mathematics
by the University of Göttingen. In 1922, when she was 40 years old, she
was appointed as Nichtbeamter ausserordentlicher Professor (a kind of
non-tenured associated professor). As remarked by Weyl, “this was a mere
title carrying no obligations and no salary. She was, however, entrusted
with a Lehrauftrag for algebra, which carried a modest remuneration.”5
Noether’s 1918 paper on “Invariant variational problems” was indeed a
milestone in invariant theory. As remarked by Noether in the curriculum
vitae attached to the Habilitation act, the paper “deals with arbitrary finite
or infinite continuous groups, in the sense of Lie, and discloses what
consequences it has for a variational problem to be invariant with respect
to such a group. The general results contain, as special cases, the theorems
3
Ibid., 125 (also in Reid 1970, 143).
4
Ibid., 32.
5
Ibid., 125.
on first integrals as they are known in mechanics; furthermore, the

conservation theorems and the interdependences among the field equations
in the theory of relativity.”6
Fig. 21-1 Emmy Noether with some of her students, colleagues and friends in a
rural establishment in the mountains surrounding Göttingen. From left to right:
Ernst Witt; Paul Bernays; Helene Weyl; Hermann Weyl; Joachim Weyl, Emil
Artin; Emmy Noether; Ernst Knauf; ??; Chiuntze Tsen; Erna Bannow (who later
became Witt’s wife).
Hermann Weyl, Noether’s colleague during his years in Göttingen,

divided her scientific production in “three clearly distinct epochs: (1) the
period of relative dependence, 1907-1919; (2) the investigations grouped
around the general theory of ideals, 1920-26; (3) the study of the non-
commutative algebras, their representations by linear transformations, and
their applications to the study of commutative number fields and their
arithmetics, from 1927 on.”7 As we already know, in the first period
Noether’s work focused on invariant theory and its applications to the
theory of relativity. Indeed, it was not until 1920 that, in the words of her
great friend, the Russian mathematician Pavel Alexandroff (1896-1982),
Noether became “the creator of a new direction in algebra and the leading,
the most consistent and brilliant representative of a certain mathematical
6
Ibid., 36.
7
Ibid., 141.
doctrine௅all that which is characterized by the words begriffliche

Mathematik (conceptual mathematics).”8
Noether’s figure is often identified with the axiomatic and conceptual
approach in algebra. According to van der Waerden, the essence of
Noether’s begriffliche Mathematik was contained in the following maxim:
Any relationships between numbers, functions and operations only become
transparent, generally applicable, and fully productive after they have been
isolated from their particular objects and been formulated as universally
valid concepts.9
Alexandroff linked this conceptual approach to what can be called

structural turn in algebra:
It was she [Noether] who taught us to think in terms of simple and general
algebraic concepts: homeomorphic mappings, groups and rings with
operators, ideals–and not in terms of cumbersome algebraic computations;
and thereby opened up the path to finding algebraic principles in places
where such principles had been obscured by some complicated special
situation which was not at all suited for the accustomed approach of the
classical algebraists.10
These ideas sound commonplace today, but they were not in Noether’s
time. Algebra in the nineteenth century dealt with quadratic forms,
cyclotomy, finite groups and fields, field extensions, ideals in rings and
invariant theory. But all these topics were connected in one way or another
with the study of different kinds of numbers: rational, real and complex
numbers. Even in the late 19th and early 20th century algebraic structures
such as groups, rings, fields or ideals were still regarded as means to an
end, namely the study of concrete problems of number theory, polynomial
algebra or geometry. This perception began to change with a paper of
1910 by the German mathematician Ernst Steinitz (1871-1928) titled
“Algebraische Theorie der Körper” (“The algebraic theory of fields”).
Steinitz’ paper marks the moment when fields themselves became objects
of interest and were not merely means to other ends. This was also the
main idea behind Noether’s conceptual approach to the study of the
8
Ibid., 156. We have replaced “abstract mathematics” (in the original text) by
“conceptual mathematics,” which is a more exact rendering of the words
begriffliche Mathematik.
9
Ibid., 101.
10
Ibid., 158.
various algebraic structures beginning in 1920.11 The generalization

beyond the realm of number of the core concepts of algebra (groups, rings,
fields, homomorphisms, etc.) by Emmy Noether and Emil Artin marked
the beginning of modern structural algebra.
Noether’s research and courses in Göttingen in the period 1920-26
focused on the theory of ideals and of commutative rings, which she
introduced in a couple of papers in 1921 and 1926 with a very elegant,
abstract approach. In these papers she also demonstrated noteworthy
results which until then had only been proven for particular cases. Indeed,
the modern concepts of ring, ideal and module over a ring, appeared for
the first time in history in the aforementioned 1921 article entitled
“Idealtheorie in Ringbereichen” (“Theory of Ideals in Ring Domains”). On
the other hand, the 1926 article, entitled “Abstrakter Aufbau del
Idealtheorie in Algebraischen Zahl- und Funktionskörpern” (“Abstract
Construction of the Theory of Ideals in Number Fields and Algebraic
Functions”), is worth mentioning since it was the first time when the
algebraic concepts were introduced axiomatically. Specifically, Noether
formulated five axioms that ensured that every ideal is a product of prime
ideals. The rings that satisfy these axioms are now called Dedekind rings,
because Dedekind’s theory of ideals in number fields and algebraic
functions of one variable is valid in them.
Since 1927, Noether directed her interest towards non-commutative
algebra, specifically to the study of ideals and modules over non-
commutative rings, as she was aware of its usefulness to address
arithmetic issues. One of the fundamental works of this last period was the
paper of 1929 “Grosser und Hyperkomplexe Darstellungstheorie”
(“Hypercomplex Quantities and Representation Theory”), which
introduced important developments in the theory of group representations.
Although the approach followed by Noether in the second (and third)
period of her work is quite different from that followed until 1920, there is
a common thread between the two periods that is worth noting and it goes
back to Hilbert’s investigations on the theory of invariants. It was under
the influence of Hilbert that Noether became interested in the
axiomatization of different algebraic concepts (abstract fields, rings,
11
Besides the work of Steinitz (and Weber) in field theory, the main predecessors
of Noether’s structural approach were Cayley and Frobenius in group theory,
Dedekind in lattice theory, and Joseph Wedderburn (1882-1948) and Leonard
Dickson in the theory of hypercomplex systems. But the main influence was the
work of Dedekind. When discussing her own work, Noether used to say with
modesty “Es steht schon bei Dedekind” (“It’s already in Dedekind”) and urged her
students to read all of Dedekind’s work in the theory of ideals.
modules, etc.) and perhaps the most important result achieved in this
direction was the axiomatization of the theory of rings we have already
mentioned. In the framework of this theory, Noether generalized Hilbert’s
finiteness theorem, which thereafter became another result of modern
algebra.
In 1924, a young Dutchman named Bartel Leendert van der Waerden
joined the research group formed around Noether in the early twenties. He
had studied mathematics and physics at the University of Amsterdam from
1919 to 1924. That year he arrived in Göttingen where “a new world
opened up before his eyes.” Just after his arrival, van der Waerden
enrolled in Noether’s course “Gruppentheorie und hypercomplexe Zahlen”
(“Group Theory and Hypercomplex Numbers”), given in the winter
semester of 1924/25. There he learned that the questions about algebraic
geometry and other issues that had worried him in Amsterdam could be
addressed with the tools developed by Dedekind, Weber, Hilbert, Emanuel
Lasker (1868-1941), Francis Macaulay (1862-1937), Steinitz and Noether
herself.
Consequently, he began to study abstract algebra and to work on his
main problem: the foundations of algebraic geometry. In 1925 van der
Waerden returned to The Netherlands where he presented his thesis on the
latter issue. That same year he went to Hamburg with a grant from the
Rockefeller Foundation to study with Erich Hecke, Emil Artin and Otto
Schreier (1901-1929). Artin taught an algebra course in the summer
semester and had promised a book on the subject to Ferdinand Springer.
So he proposed to van der Waerden to take notes of his summer course
and to write the book promised to Springer together. Artin was so pleased
with the quality of van der Waerden’s notes that he suggested he write the
book alone.
Back in Göttingen, van der Waerden attended Noether’s course
“Hypercomplexe Grösser and Darstellungstheorie” (“Hypercomplex
Quantities and Representation Theory”) during the winter semester of
1927/28. Again, van der Waerden took notes of the course and Noether
took advantage of them for the publication of the paper with the same title
in Mathematische Annalen which we have mentioned earlier and which
would have a profound influence on the development of algebra. The
results of Artin’s and Noether’s research, presented in the courses which
van der Waerden attended in Göttingen and Hamburg respectively,
constitute the greater part of van der Waerden’s book Moderne Algebra,
published in 1930 when he was only 27 years old. Moderne Algebra is
probably the most influential treatise on algebra of the twentieth century
and the first to offer an overview of the discipline from the conceptual and
abstract point of view characteristic of modern structural algebra.
In a 1975 article, van der Waerden explained the origins of some
abstract notions and themes of his book Moderne Algebra, such as the
concepts of group, field, ideal, group and algebra representations, etc. For
example, he explained that the first person to give an abstract definition of
field and make an extensive and unified study of the theory of fields was
Steinitz in his paper of 1910, which he relied on for writing the fifth
chapter of Moderne Algebra entitled Köpertheorie (Field Theory).
Regarding group theory, van der Waerden explains that he learned it from
the course Noether taught in Göttingen during the academic year of
1924/25 and from discussions with Artin and Schreier in Hamburg, as well
as from the books by Andreas Speiser (1885-1927) and William Burnside
(1852-1927) on group theory. Also, for the theory of ideals, van der
Waerden mentions Noether’s articles of 1921 and 1926 on the theory of
ideals, whereas regarding representation theory he mentions Noether’s
paper of 1929.
While the book by van der Waerden systematizes a series of new
results that had been achieved in the field of algebra in recent years by
Dedekind, Hilbert, Artin and Noether, among others, what caused a major
impact was his way of conceiving and presenting this discipline, inherited
largely from Noether. Moderne Algebra was indeed the first algebra
textbook that presented systematically, relying on abstract set theory and
applying the axiomatic method, the various areas of algebra as a
homogeneous whole. Moreover, the approach followed by van der
Waerden in his book was based on the recognition that groups, ideals,
rings, fields, etc. are indeed realizations of the same idea, namely, the idea
of an algebraic structure and that algebra is precisely the study of these
structures. This structural conception of algebra would be resumed and
exploited by Bourbaki, a group of French mathematicians who would
largely lead the development of mathematics in the second half of the
twentieth century (see Chapter 23).
The abstract and conceptual approach to algebra has become so
commonplace today that we easily forget that in the first half of the
twentieth century this approach had to be gradually asserted. As we have
seen, Noether’s role in this dissemination was authoritative, but of course
she was not alone. She had illustrious predecessors such as Dedekind,
Steinitz, Weber, Cayley, Frobenius, Wedderburn and Dickson, but also
many graduate students and young colleagues (Grete Herman, Köthe,
Krull, Deuring, Fitting, Witt, Tsen, Shoda, Levitski, van der Waerden) and
associates (Schmidt, Artin, Hasse, Alexandroff, Pontrjagin, Hopf) that
spread her work and made possible the abstract turn in algebra. When we
speak of Noether’s school, this does not mean just the circle of her direct
pupils, but those mathematicians from home and abroad who, in close
exchange with Emmy Noether, but quite independently, developed
abstract algebra and contributed to the dissemination of Noether’s
conceptual approach to mathematics.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
MATHEMATICS IN GÖTTINGEN
UNDER THE NAZIS
Hilbert retired from his professorship in Göttingen in 1930 at the age of

68. Upon his retirement, he was honoured by his home city of Königsberg.
The presentation of the “honorary citizenship” was scheduled to be made
at the 91st Convention of the Society of German Scientist and Doctors,
which was being held in Königsberg in September of that year. The
meeting was held in conjunction with the Sixth Conference of German
Physicists and Mathematicians and the Second Congress on the
Epistemology of Exact Sciences. It was at the joint inaugural conference
that Hilbert was appointed honorary citizen of the city of Königsberg and
gave the lecture “Naturerkennen und Logik” (“Natural Knowledge and
Logic”).
In his address, Hilbert outlined the basic tenets of his research program
and repeated his conviction, already expressed in his famous 1900 address
of Paris, that every mathematical problem is solvable. Arrangements were
made for Hilbert to repeat the conclusion of his talk over the local radio
station; and, breaking off the meeting, he was accompanied to the
broadcasting studio. A record of Hilbert’s talk pronounced at the
broadcasting studio exists. It ends with the same motto which is placed
over his grave in Göttingen: Wir müssen wissen. Wir werden wissen.
One of the attendees to the satellite Congress on Epistemology was Kurt
Gödel. The last day a roundtable on the foundations of mathematics,
directed by Hans Hahn, was scheduled. At the end of the session, Gödel
spoke for the first time and, after an intervention by von Neumann,
announced his result on the incompleteness of formal systems. As we have
already explained, Gödel’s result annulled Hilbert’s firm belief that in
mathematics there are no irresolvable problems and his absolute confidence
in the provability of the consistency of mathematics (see Chapter 20). It is
likely that Gödel attended the inaugural address of Hilbert. They never knew
each other personally or kept any correspondence.
216 Chapter Twenty-Two
Fig. 22-1 David Hilbert in a lecture, 1932
According to Reid, when Hilbert first learned about Gödel’s work from
Bernays, he was “somewhat angry”:
At first he was only angry and frustrated, but then he began to try to deal
constructively with the problem. Bernays found himself impressed that
even now, at the very end of his career, Hilbert was able to make great
changes in his program. It was not yet clear just what influence Gödel’s
work would ultimately have. Gödel himself felt௅and expressed the thought
in his paper௅that his work did not contradict Hilbert’s formalistic point of
view. Broadened methods would permit the loosening of the requirements
of formalizing. Hilbert himself now took a step in this direction. This was
the replacing of the schema of complete induction by a looser rule called
Mathematics in Göttingen under the Nazis 217
“unendliche Induktion.” In 1931 two papers in the new direction

appeared.1
Although in 1931 Hilbert had already retired as a professor, he still gave a

weekly class entitled “Introduction to Philosophy based on Modern
Science.” The four Ordinarii (full professors) of mathematics were then
Hermann Weyl, Edmund Landau, Richard Courant and Gustav Herglotz.
Weyl, who the previous year had changed the tranquillity of Zürich for
Göttingen to occupy Hilbert’s chair, lectured on a wide range of topics that
included differential geometry, algebraic topology and philosophy of
mathematics, besides conducting a weekly seminar on the representation
theory of groups. When Minkowski died in 1909 Landau, who occupied
Minkowski’s post, lectured to an enormous number of students on number
theory. Courant, who had occupied Klein’s chair upon his death in 1925,
was the director of the Mathematical Institute. Herglotz, who followed
Runge when he retired in 1925, also lectured on a wide variety of topics:
Lie groups, mechanics, geometric optics, functions with real variables, etc.
The Extraordinarii (associate professors) included Paul Bernays,
Emmy Noether and Paul Hertz. Bernays was Hilbert’s assistant, now at the
expense of Hilbert himself, and worked with him in the preparation of
Grundlagen der Mathematik. He also taught Klein’s course Elementary
Mathematics from a superior point of view, a summer course basically
designed for high school teachers. Noether imparted courses on the
subjects that at that time occupied her research, such as the representation
of groups and algebras. Paul Hertz lectured on physics and the theory of
causality, just next door to the Institute of Physics, where Max Born,
Richard Pohl and James Franck, among others, also lectured.
There were also many Privatdozenten and young Assistenten, such as
Hans Lewy (1904-1988), Otto Neugebauer (1899-1990), Arnold Schmidt
(1902-1967), Herbert Busemann (1905-1994), Werner Fenchel (1905-
1988), Franz Rellich (1906-1955) and Wilhelm Magnus (1907-1990).
Among the most prominent students there were Gerhard Gentzen (1909-
1945), Fritz John (1910-1994), Peter Scherk (1910-1985), Olga Taussky-
Todd (1906-1995) and Ernst Witt (1911-1991). Visiting professors
continued to come to Göttingen, attracted by the international prestige and
wanting to present the fruits of their latest research. For example, during
the course of 1931/32 Godfrey Hardy visited Göttingen invited by Landau,
Pavel Alexandroff presented his latest formulation of algebraic topology,
Emil Artin arrived from Hamburg to present his research on class field

1
Reid 1970, 198-99.
theory and Richard von Misses (1883-1953) came from Berlin to discuss
his foundations of the theory of probability.
These lectures were attended by the impressive staff of members of the
Mathematical Institute, Hilbert included, and after each one they discussed
the different theories presented with a critical spirit and open eye. On the
other hand, the social life continued being intense and included a weekly
celebration in Weyl’s house and also some celebrations in Landau’s house,
the best in Göttingen. Also, the rides and excursions to the mountains
around Göttingen were frequented, and normally ended in a rural
establishment to drink coffee and continue talking about mathematics and
politics. In short, Göttingen was still a centre of excellence in
mathematical research and a paradigm of modern universities in the early
thirties.
Fig. 22-2 Courant, Landau and Weyl converse in Göttingen, ca. 1930
Unfortunately, the situation for mathematical and scientific research in

Göttingen and the rest of the German universities would worsen
dramatically in a few years. In 1930 Germany faced serious economic and
political problems caused by the Great Depression of 1929: a deficit of
850 million marks, unemployment that affected six million people, the
lack of foreign financing, fear of a new escalation of inflation like that
which had occurred in the early 1920s, etc. To alleviate this economic
situation, the government proposed a series of economic measures that the

Reichstag, the German parliament, refused. As a result of this, the
Reichstag was dissolved and new elections were convened to confirm the
rise of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German’s Workers Party
(NSDAP).
During 1932, politics and life in Germany worsened progressively,
with constant street fights between Nazi brown shirts and communist
groups. In January 1933, Hitler’s Nazi Party aligned itself with the
German National Party, a conservative nationalist party led by Franz von
Papen, to contest the German Chancellery elections. The joint vote of both
formations allowed Hitler to be appointed by German President Paul von
Hindenburg, Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933. Hitler himself,
eager for more power, convened new general elections for March 5, 1933.
On February 27, one week before, the building of the Reichstag was set on
fire. This fact benefited Hitler’s party, which obtained, with the help of an
intense campaign of propaganda based on the omnipresence of Hitler’s
allegations and images, 43.9 % of the votes. On March 23, the Reichstag
approved the so-called Enabling Act, which gave the cabinet the right to
enact laws without the consent of the parliament and ended, de facto, with
parliamentary government, turning Hitler into a constitutional dictator.
On April 7, 1933, the German government passed a law prohibiting
Jews from taking office in the state administration unless they had entered
before 1914 or had served in the army during the First World War.
Likewise, the suspension of work was contemplated for all those civil
servants who were not sufficiently committed to the new order. Because
German university professors, regardless of whether they were Ordinarii,
Extraordinarii, Privatdozenten or Assistenten, were all state officials, the
April 7 law meant the expulsion of all Dozenten of Jewish origin from the
University of Göttingen and the rest of German universities. In addition,
some professors were married to Jews, or had friends or relatives of
Jewish origin, so many of them decided to leave although they were not
required to by law. The consequences for the Mathematical Institute were
terrible. Courant, Noether and Bernstein were dismissed immediately.
Courant went first to Cambridge where he remained only one year,
since in 1934 he joined New York University as a visiting professor. In
1935 he was invited to build up the Department of Mathematics at the
Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where he began to build the nucleus
of a small research group following the style of the research groups at
Göttingen. After the War the group grew and was reinforced with financial
aid, becoming the Institute for Mathematics and Mechanics. After
Courant’s retirement in 1958 as director, the institute was renamed Courant
Institute of Mathematical Sciences in honour of its organizer and first

director.
Fig. 22.3 Emmy Noether’s letter of dismissal, copy for the Rektorat
The same year as the rise of Hitler to power, in the United States the
Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars had been
created for assisting professors who were barred from teaching by the
Nazis and helping them finding new appointments in the USA. This
committee obtained a professorship for Noether at Bryn Mawr College, a
women’s liberal arts college in Pennsylvania and with the aid of the
Rockefeller Foundation, paid the salary of her first year there. In 1934, her
appointment at Bryn Mawr was renewed for a couple of years more and
she was invited to deliver weekly lectures at the Institute of Advanced
Studies at Princeton by Abraham Flexner and Oswald Veblen.2 But fortune
did not last long, since the following year an operation to eliminate a
uterine tumour was complicated and she died shortly after, on April 14,
1935.
When Courant left, Otto Neugebauer was appointed director of the
Mathematical Institute, but he only lasted one day in this position.
Neugebauer was required to sign a declaration of loyalty to the new
government, but by refusing to sign it he was immediately suspended of
salary and work. On April 27, Bernays, Paul Hertz and Hans Lewy were
also dismissed, and Landau was warned that he could not lecture the next
semester. Hermann Weyl was not a Jew, but his wife was, and therefore his
two children were also considered Jews. So, in the summer semester of
1933, he accepted a post in the newly created Institute of Advanced
Studies at Princeton and left Göttingen.
Landau had been a civil servant before World War I and so he was not
affected by the April 7 law. However, at the recommendation of the dean
not to lecture the next semester, his calculus course in the summer
semester was taught by his assistant Werner Weber (1906-1975), a fervent
national-socialist. Landau insisted on preparing the course and during each
class he stayed in his office. When he attempted to resume his calculus
classes in the winter semester, the students staged a boycott with SA
guards standing at the doors and forced Landau to retreat to his office. On
November 2, Oswald Teichmüller (1913-1943) presented Landau with a
letter formally explaining why they did not find him “fit for teaching.” He
spent the winter semester at Groningen, in the Netherlands. On 7 February
1934, he was officially retired and moved to Berlin. After this he only
lectured outside Germany, spending some time in Cambridge and in The
Netherlands.
Altogether, eighteen mathematicians left voluntarily or were expelled
from the Mathematical Institute of Göttingen during 1933. At the

2
As a woman she could not be appointed for a teaching position in Princeton.
University of Berlin things were also getting tough, and 23 professors of

the faculty of mathematics, including Max Dehn (1878-1952), Hans
Freudenthal (1905-1990) and Richard von Misses, had to leave their
positions. And the same thing happened in the rest of German universities,
although to a lesser extent in the case of mathematical faculties due to
their smaller size. The number of German speaking mathematicians
expulsed or persecuted during the Nazi period is presented in the
following table:3
Aachen 1/2 Göttingen 24/28 Munich 4/5

(Amsterdam) 0/1 Graz 0/1 Münster 1/1
Berlin 41/62 Greifswald 0/1 (Prague) 5/13
Bonn 1/3 Halle ½ Rostock 0/1
Brunswick 1/1 Hamburg 4/4 Saarbrücken 0/1
Breslau 8/11 Heidelberg 4/5 Schweidnitz 0/1
Cologne 1/2 Karlsruhe 2/4 (Stockholm) 0/1
Dresden 0/1 Kassel 0/2 (Trieste) 1/1
Elsterwerda 0/1 Kiel 2/4 Tübingen 0/1
Essen 0/1 Königsberg 7/8 Vacha 0/1
Frankfurt 9/14 Landsberg 0/1 Vienna 20/27
Freiberg 0/1 Leipzig 2/2 (Warsaw) 0/1
Freiburg 4/6 Mansfeld 0/1 Würzburg 0/2
Giessen 0/2 Marburg ¼ (Zurich) 0/1
When Weyl resigned to his post, it was offered to Helmut Hasse. Hasse
was a first-class mathematician who had been a disciple of Landau,
Noether and Hecke in Göttingen and was acceptable in the eyes of the
Nazi authorities for his strong nationalist and right-wing feelings, so he
was also offered the direction of the Mathematical Institute. At the request
of Weyl, Hasse accepted the position and from 1934 he became director of
the Mathematical Institute of Göttingen, although he had to share this
position with Erhard Tornier (1894-1982). Despite his ideological

3
From Siegmund Schultze (2009, 66). As explained by the author, “the first
figure denotes the number of emigrants, the number after the slash denotes the total
number of those expelled and persecuted, including emigrants. Some differences
compared to the total number of those persecuted result from double counting of
certain persons or from uncertainty as to the place of expulsion/persecution. As is
generally the case in this book, only German-speaking mathematicians are
included, which is important to note for Amsterdam (persecution of Freudenthal),
Trieste (Frucht), and Stockholm (threat to Müntz). Places outside Germany, where
Germans were persecuted, are set in parentheses.” (Ibid., 65, n. 23).
proximity to Nazism, Hasse had numerous problems with his most

fundamentalist nationalist colleagues such as Oswald Teichmüller, Werner
Weber and especially Tornier, who on several occasions manoeuvred to
take Hasse out as co-director of the Mathematical Institute. Tornier was
also, together with Theodor Vahlen (1869-1945) and Ludwig Bieberbach,
one of the greatest ideologues of Deutsche Mathematik, a movement that
wanted to promote “German mathematics” and eliminate Jewish influence
on it. However,
The movement for a “Deutsche Mathematik” did not involve solely the
expulsion of Jews, or the restriction to a few Nazi-promoted topics. Above
all, the concept of a “German” mathematics not only involved a perverse
and radical application of ideas that were commonplace in the scientific
thinking of the day, but, at the same time, it also gave political meaning to
various familiar currents within mathematics.4
Among these ideas there were those that assigned specific structures of
personality (psychological characters, modes of thought, etc.) to different
ethnic or “racial” types, thus enabling to discern “German” mathematics
from other kind of mathematics, such as Oriental or Jewish mathematics.5
Such ideas led to the journal Deutsche Mathematik, edited by Vahlen and
Bieberbach from 1936 to 1943. Besides them, other mathematicians that
usually published in this journal were Teichmüller, a brilliant young
mathematician and convinced Nazi, and Werner Weber, who has written
his dissertation under Noether’s supervision and had been Landau’s
assistant from 1928. Despite this, he was the leader of the student boycott
against Landau and in 1934 he also attempted to prevent Hasse from
assuming the direction of the Mathematical Institute.
As of 1934, the chairs of Courant, Weyl and Landau were occupied by
Theodor Kaluza (1885-1954), Hasse and Tornier respectively. Herglotz
(the successor to Runge) continued until 1948, when he was granted the
title of Professor Emeritus. Tornier’s chair was occupied by Rolf
Nevanlinna (1895-1980) between 1936 and 1937 and by Car Ludwig
Siegel between 1938 and 1940. Both Hasse and Siegel were first-rate
mathematicians, so it cannot be said that Göttingen did not continue to be
a centre of excellence in the research and teaching of mathematics during
the Nazi period. However, the splendour of the golden age of Klein,
Hilbert, Minkowski and Runge or of Courant, Weyl, Noether and Landau,
among many others, would never be recovered.

4
Segal 1986, 119.
5
Jews were usually described as “Orientals” by German writers from time ago.
During the following years, the Nazis continued their policy of

exclusion and humiliation towards non-Aryans and those who did not
agree with their ideas. Thus, to the forty-five professors expelled from
Göttingen in 1933 a total of seventy more docents expelled during the
winter semester of 1935/36 and the summer of 1944 followed. Hilbert died
in 1943, the year in which World War II began to change its sign and the
Nazi leaders began to glimpse, even in the distance, their particular dusk.
The decline of Germany, even its defeat, had begun many years ago.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
HILBERT, BOURBAKI AND THE

STRUCTURAL IMAGE OF MATHEMATICS
The First World War had had more dramatic consequences for the
development of mathematics in France than in Germany. The war had
decimated the French population, including scientists and mathematicians.
Thus, between 50% and 60% of the 1910, 1911 and 1912 graduates of the
École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where the French scientific and
intellectual elite was formed, had died in the Great War. One of the
consequences of this was that at the end of the war and during the 1920s,
the average age of mathematicians who held relevant positions at the
Académie des sciences or at the Sorbonne was particularly high.
After the War, French science was exhausted and with minimal
international contacts or information about the latest developments abroad,
especially about those coming from the most advanced German research
centres (Göttingen, Hamburg, Berlin), as some young French
mathematicians, such as Jacques Herbrand (1908-1931), Claude Chevalley
(1909-1984), André Weil and Jean Leray (1906-1998), could verify during
visits to those centres. This led to the mathematicians Émile Borel (1871-
1956) in France and David Birkhoff (1884-1944) in the United States to
persuade French patrons like Edmond de Rothschild and Americans such
as John D. Rockefeller to contribute to the financing of an institution that
supported courses and international exchanges in the field of mathematics
and theoretical physics. As a result of this, the Henri Poincaré Institute was
inaugurated in 1928, which would gradually become a research centre of
international prestige in both mathematics and physics.
In general, in the thirties the situation of mathematics in France had not
improved much in relation to the previous decade. André Weil, then a
young Maître de Conférences (the equivalent of assistant professor) at the
University of Strasbourg still in his twenties, has described it in the
following terms:
At that time, scientific life in France was dominated by two or three
coteries of academicians, some of whom were visibly driven more by their
226 Chapter Twenty-Three
appetite for power than by a devotion to science. This situation, along with
the hecatomb of 1914-1918 which had slaughtered virtually an entire
generation, had had a disastrous effect on the level of research in France.1
André Weil and Henri Cartan (1904-2008), another assistant professor at

Strasbourg, were very concerned about the teaching of analysis at the
French universities. One of their main duties at Strasbourg was the
teaching of differential and integral calculus. The standard text was the
Traité d’Analyse of Édouard Goursat (1858-1936), which they found
wanting in many ways. Cartan frequently asked Weyl how to present this
material, so to end with these problems once and for all, Weil proposed to
Henri Cartan, to “write a new textbook for analysis.”
Weil and Cartan used to visit Paris regularly, where they attended the
Mathematics Seminar held every Monday at the Henri Poincaré Institute.
This allowed them to meet with former normalien such as Claude
Chevalley, Jean Delsarte (1903-1968), Jean Dieudonné (1906-1992) and
René de Possel (1905-1974). They met for lunch at Café Capoulade,
Boulevard de Saint-Michel, and at one of these meetings, Weil asked them
what they thought of his idea of writing a new textbook of analysis and if
there was someone who was interested in collaborating. All attendees at
the meetings at Café Capoulade were aware of the situation of research
and teaching of mathematics in France in the thirties, so the reaction to
Weil’s proposal was enthusiastic. They agreed to meet on Monday,
December 10, 1934 to formally discuss the idea of Weil, and a few months
later, in July 1935, they celebrated the first Congress in Besse-en-
Chandesse. During that summer, they also decided to sign their writings
with the pseudonym Nicolas Bourbaki, borrowed from a French general
who was active in the Franco-Prussian war. The 1935 Congress would be,
then, the first of the Bourbaki Congresses that have continued to be held
regularly to this day, usually three times a year for one or two weeks.
In 1935 Bourbaki had already abandoned the project of writing a
textbook on analysis and proposed a much more ambitious project: to
write a work that, in Weil’s words, constituted “a sufficiently broad and
solid basis to support the essential of modern mathematics.” According to
the initial project, the work had to consist of six volumes (Theory of sets,
Algebra, Topology, Functions of One Real Variable, Topological Vector
Spaces and Integration), which would be published progressively,
although without following any specific order. There is no doubt that
Éléments de mathématiques, the name which would receive this book, and
which remains unfinished today, is the fundamental work of Bourbaki and

1
Weil 1992, 120.
Hilbert, Bourbaki and the Structural Image of Mathematics 227
its reason for being as a group. However, Bourbaki also published some
notes in the Comptes Rendus of the Académie des Sciences, and a couple
of papers more that contain Bourbaki’s main ideas about mathematics and
the guidelines that the Elements would follow in the future.
Fig. 23-1 Photo taken at the Bourbaki founding congress in Besse-en-Chandesse,

July 1935. Standing left to right: Henri Cartan, René de Possel, Jean Dieudonné,
André Weil and Luc Olivier (a biologist). Seated left to right: a “guinea pig”
(prospective Bourbaki member) named Mirles, Claude Chevalley and Szolem
Mandelbrojt (1899-1983).
Bourbaki was formed initially by Henri Cartan, Claude Chevalley, Jean

Delsarte, Jean Dieudonné and André Weil. These were “the true ‫ލ‬founding
fathers,‫ ތ‬those who shaped Bourbaki and gave it much of their time and
thoughts until they retired.”2 One of the main sources of inspiration for the
group, was the approach followed by van der Waerden in his book
Moderne Algebra. As Dieudonné explained in an address before the
Romanian Society of Mathematics in 1968, “the Bourbaki treatise was
modelled in the beginning on the excellent algebra treatise of van der
Waerden […] Van der Waerden uses very precise language and has an
extremely tight organization of the development of ideas and of the
different parts of the book as a whole.”3 In fact, we could see the Bourbaki
project as an attempt to extend to all branches of mathematics (set theory,

2
Borel 1998, 374.
3
Dieudonné 1970, 137.
algebra, topology, functional analysis, etc.) the conceptual and abstract

approach, based on the underlying idea of mathematical structure,
characteristic of van der Waerden’s book.
Another major influence was Hilbert. In 1950, Dieudonné published an
article in the journal American Mathematical Monthly, signed under the
name Bourbaki, which has been considered as the group’s manifesto. In it,
Dieudonné echoed Hilbert’s belief in the unity of mathematics, based on
the universality of the axiomatic method, which would have enabled “the
systematic study of the relations existing between different mathematical
theories.”4 According to Bourbaki, it is the way in which mathematics is
generated from a few axiomatic theories of various kinds, which
constitutes its architecture and makes it intelligible.
Later, Dieudonné would write the article “David Hilbert (1862-1943),”
in which he affirmed that although it was true that there had been many
partisans of the axiomatic method, “before Hilbert no one had pursued this
program with so much decision and clarity, nor had anyone been able to
emphasize so well the fundamental principle that in mathematics the very
nature of the objects studied is not of interest; the relationships that exist
between them are the only thing that matters.” 5 The axioms, insofar as
they define these relationships, provide the architecture of the different
branches of mathematics with which the mathematicians deal. In this
sense, according to Dieudonné, the mastery of Hilbert would have had no
paragon:
More than by his ingenious discoveries, it is perhaps because of the
character of his thought that Hilbert has exerted the deepest influence in
the mathematical world: He taught the mathematicians to think
axiomatically, that is to say, trying to reduce each theory to its stricter
logical scheme, getting rid of the contingencies of the calculation [...] Due
to his intense need to understand, due to his increasingly demanding
intellectual integrity, for his untiring aspiration towards an increasingly
unified, pure and free science, Hilbert has truly personified, for the
generation between the two wars, the ideal of the mathematician.6
But Bourbaki went a step beyond Hilbert (and van der Waerden), when
attributing a central role in his unified vision of mathematics to the notion,
closely related to the axiomatic method, of mathematical structure:

4
Bourbaki 1950, 222.
5
Dieudonné 1983, 30.
6
Ibid., 32.
Each structure carries with it its own language, freighted with special
intuitive references derived from the theories from which the axiomatic
analysis described above has derived the structure […] What all this
amounts to is that mathematics has less than ever been reduced to a purely
mechanical game of isolated formulas; more than ever does intuition
dominate in the genesis of discoveries. But henceforth, it possesses the
powerful tools furnished by the theory of the great types of structures; in a
single view, it sweeps over immense domains, now unified by the
axiomatic method, but which were formerly in a completely chaotic state.7
Certainly, van der Waerden had set up a similar task in the field of algebra.
Indeed, as we have already explained, van der Waerden’s book was an
important source of inspiration in the early years of Bourbaki’s activity. In
the thirties and forties, the new methods and concepts introduced by
Emmy Noether and Emil Artin in Germany were not yet known in France,
so the reading of van der Waerden’s book caused a profound impact.
Following van der Waerden’s approach in algebra, “Bourbaki undertook
the task of presenting the whole picture of mathematical knowledge in a
systematic and unified fashion, within a standard system of notation,
addressing similar questions, and using similar conceptual tools and
methods in the different branches.” 8 However, there was a substantial
difference between the approach and presentation of modern algebra by
van der Waerden and the much more ambitious program of rewriting all of
mathematics set up by Bourbaki. In fact, van der Waerden did not attempt
to define at any time the notion of algebraic structure nor theorized about
what we might call “structural research in algebra.” Bourbaki, on the other
hand, not only defined the concept of mathematical structure in several
places, but also developed an axiomatic and formal theory of structures
through which “he” wanted to respond to the open questions posed by the
central role of the concept of structure in mathematics.9
After the Second World War, Bourbaki resumed its activity and from
1947 onwards “he” continued publishing the volumes of Éléments de

7
Bourbaki 1950, p. 227-28.
8
Corry 1992, 320.
9
Bourbaki provides a formalization of the concept of structure in Chapter IV of the
book on set theory. However, the following chapters do not make use of this
formalization. In fact, Bourbaki’s “Theory of Sets, and particularly the concept of
structure defined in it, are not essential to the contents of the Eléments. One can
read and understand any book of Bourbaki’s treatise without first learning the
theory of structures” (Corry 2004, 329-30). It is then in the “non formal” meaning
of the word “structure”, which belongs to Bourbaki’s image of mathematics, where
Bourbaki’s influence in the structural image of mathematics ultimately lies.
mathématiques, which had been stopped for five years when only a few
chapters of the three first volumes had been published. When the project
was resumed new young mathematicians joined the group. In particular,
Roger Godement (1921-2016), Pierre Samuel (1921-2009), Jacques
Dixmier (1924- ) and Jean-Pierre Serre (1926- ) joined Bourbaki in the late
40s. And, a little later, Samuel Eilenberg (1913-1998), Jean-Louis Koszul
(1921- ) and Laurent Schwartz (1915-2002) also joined. In the mid-50s,
another generation of young mathematicians joined, among them Serge
Lang (1927-2005), Armand Borel (1923-2003), Alexandre Grothendieck
(1928-2014), Francois Bruhat (1929-2007), Pierre Cartier (1932- ) and
John Tate (1925- ). As remarked by Borel, “the fifties was a period of
spreading influence of Bourbaki, both by the treatise and the research of
members. Remember in particular the so-called French explosion in
algebraic topology, the coherent sheaves in analytic geometry, then in
algebraic geometry over, later in the abstract case, and homological
algebra.”10
In 1958 the six projected volumes were finished. Grothendieck had
proposed the year before, in the Bourbaki Congress of 1957, the
elaboration of three volumes more about Homological Algebra,
Elementary Topology and Varieties along the lines set in the six previous
volumes. Grothendieck himself presented in the next congress a draft of
two chapters of the third volume. Unfortunately, despite the successes
achieved by Grothendieck and others, the project for the publication of
new volumes of Éléments de mathématiques began to decline during the
70s, perhaps due to the difficulties of the new disciplines to be treated
(homotopy, spectral theory of operators, etc.) and to the fact that these
were disciplines still not solidified, to which it was difficult to apply the
characteristic structuralist approach of Bourbaki.
At the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first century,
Bourbaki still exists but the group is not so active and influential as it was
in the fifties and sixties. After the six volumes of Éléments de
mathématiques were published in the fifties, four more volumes have been
published since then: Commutative Algebra, Lie Groups and Algebras,
Spectral Theory and Algebraic Topology. The most recent volume on
Algebraic Topology was published in 2016, so although Bourbaki is far
from being dead, it is also true that the volumes of Éléments de
mathématique are no longer published at the same rate as before.
Moreover, although the Bourbaki’s seminar are still held with the same

10
Borel 1998, 376.
periodicity as before, today the mathematical community no longer speaks

of Bourbaki and for many mathematicians Bourbaki is dead.
The reasons for the decline of Bourbaki’s influence over time are
multiple, some of them of an intrinsically mathematical nature: Today
mathematics has expanded enormously in different and multiple
directions, and Bourbakian emphasis on axioms and structures cannot
easily accommodate various new branches of mathematics such as, for
example, those arising from computer science. Also, unlike what happened
in the middle of the last century, nowadays there is no consensus about the
rooting of mathematics in a single theory such as set theory and there is
more interest towards concrete geometry, combinatorics, algebraic
topology and other branches of mathematics not touched upon by
Bourbaki. Another important reason which can be related to the outdating
of Bourbaki’s approach to mathematics is the emergence of Category
theory:
Today, no discussion of mathematical structures is complete without a
discussion of category theory. Introduced around 1942 by Samuel
Eilenberg (who would later become a member of Bourbaki) and Saunders
MacLane, category theory provides an abstract and general framework for
describing numerous mathematical situations and the connections between
them [...] The language of categories and functors spread rapidly during the
sixties. Some Bourbaki members put it to great use, including Eilenberg of
course, but also Charles Ehresmann and especially Alexandre
Grothendieck. Category theory, which is much more general than the
structures described by Bourbaki in Éléments de mathématique, could have
played an important part in the structural vision of mathematics, but
Bourbaki did not update its Architecture des mathématiques. More
importantly, the group did not manage to use categories in its treatise,
despite the group’s numerous discussions and preliminary drafts on the
subject. One of the reasons for this is that the task would have required a
profound revision of the existing volumes.11
Although Bourbaki’s influence has decreased over time, there is no doubt

that “his” name will survive in the Olympus of mathematicians. Not only
has Bourbaki had a paramount influence in modernizing mathematics and
clarifying its language and concepts during the second half of the
twentieth century, but also some of “his” members have made, on an
individual level but following the spirit of Bourbaki, impressive
contributions to contemporary mathematics. This would be the case, for
example, of the contributions of Laurent Schwartz, Jean-Pierre Serre,

11
Mashaal 2006, 83-84.
Alexandre Grothendieck, Alain Connes (1947- ) or Jean-Christophe

Yoccoz (1957-2016) just to cite some significant members of Bourbaki
who were recipients of the Fields medal. Indeed, thanks to the works of
Weil, Serre, Grothendieck, Pierre Deligne (1944- ) and other members and
collaborators of the group, Bourbaki returned to France the hegemony in
European mathematics, particularly in algebraic geometry, at least for a
couple of decades.
EPILOGUE
FROM GÖTTINGEN TO PRINCETON AND PARIS
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the United States had
spectacular economic growth. Some businessmen such as Andrew
Carnegie, Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller or Marshall Field gathered
great fortunes that, at least to a certain extent, ended up returning to
society through donations or philanthropic foundations. In 1925, Louis
Bamberger and his sister Caroline Bamberger Fuld, owners of a
department stores chain decided to sell it and to devote themselves to
philanthropy. In 1929, just before the stock market crack, R. H. Macy, the
owner of a famous department store in New York, purchased Bamberger’s
department store chain.
The Bambergers contacted Abraham Flexner, a well-known expert on
higher education issues, to give them advice. Flexner, who had carefully
studied institutions of recognized international prestige such as All Souls
College in Oxford, the Collège de France in Paris, and the German
universities of the late 19th century, particularly Göttingen, considered it
necessary to create an advanced research institution in the United States.
Flexner’s idea of a research institute where researchers had absolute
freedom to carry out their research would immediately capture the interest
of the Bambergers. After a series of discussions and correspondence, they
abandoned their initial idea of a medical school and accepted Flexner’s
plan to create an Institute for Advanced Studies, insisting that Flexner be
its first director.
Once Flexner’s plan was accepted, the Bambergers wanted to place the
institution in Washington, the capital district, but Flexner convinced them
that it would be better to place it in a quiet place like Princeton, next to the
university of the same name, one of the oldest and most prestigious of the
United States. Flexner also suggested that the Institute should begin with
mathematics, which he considered the most difficult discipline and
“antecedent” to all others. Thus, in the fall of 1932, Flexner publicly
announced the creation of the first school of the Institute for Advanced
Studies (IAS) at Princeton, the School of Mathematics. The first professors
appointed by Flexner were Oswald Veblen and Albert Einstein. Flexner
234 Epilogue
also wanted to recruit Hermann Weyl, who at that time occupied Hilbert’s
chair in Göttingen, but Weyl was still undecided about his future and
would not join the IAS until the fall of 1933. Because the School of
Mathematics still had no building, activities began in the spring of 1933 in
the building of the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Princeton.
In 1933 Flexner recruited John von Neumann, who was then a visiting
professor at Princeton University. In the IAS, von Neumann would make
important contributions to game theory and computer science. He
remained there until his death in 1957. Despite its name, the School of
Mathematics included both mathematicians and physicists. Einstein was a
physicist, and von Neumann had also made important contributions to
physics. At the beginning of the academic year of 1933/34, the IAS
already had five mathematicians and physicists of the first rank: James
Alexander (1888-1971), Einstein, Veblen, Weyl and von Neumann, as
well as about twenty visiting professors, some of them as prominent as the
logician and mathematician Kurt Gödel. During 1934 and 1935
respectively, the theoretical physicists Paul Dirac and Wolfgang Pauli
joined the staff of the School of Mathematics.
We could say, then, that the IAS became a refuge for German and
European researchers who fled Nazi Germany during the 1930s. Thanks to
the arrival of these researchers at the IAS, Princeton replaced Göttingen as
the world’s leading centre for mathematical and physical research.
Obviously, this transfer of powers was even more noteworthy after the end
of World War II. In 1947 the theoretical physicist Robert Oppenheimer
was appointed director of the School of Mathematics. Oppenheimer was a
charismatic leader and was able to attract the most outstanding theoretical
physicists interested in particle physics research, and so Princeton became
the new Mecca of research in theoretical physics around the world. The
visiting professors at the IAS included internationally renowned figures
such as Pauli, Dirac or Hideki Yukawa (1907-1981), as well as young
researchers such as Murray Gell-Mann (1929- ), Geoffrey Chew (1924- ,
Francis Low (1921-2007), Yoichiro Nambu (1921-2015), and Cécile
Morette (1922-2017).
Oppenheimer also appointed as faculty members young physicists such
as Abraham Pais (1918-2000), Freeman Dyson (1923- ), Tsung-Dao Lee
(1926- ) and Chen Ning Yang (1922- ), the latter two winners of the Nobel
Prize in Physics in 1957. The high number of physicists at the School of
Mathematics made it advisable to create a School of Natural Sciences, that
began work in 1966 and to which the physicists were assigned from then
onwards. Also the School of Mathematics made some spectacular
appointments under the direction of Oppenheimer such as Armand Borel,
From Göttingen to Princeton and Paris 235
Fig. 24-1 Kurt Gödel and Albert Einstein at Princeton, 1950

236 Epilogue
Deane Montgomery (1909-1992), Atle Selberg (1917-2007), André Weil

and Hassler Whitney (1907-1989). Oppenheimer would retire as director
of the IAS in 1966, having made Princeton an example for all American
universities to follow.
Despite the ravages caused by the Second World War in Europe, in the
1950s, some initiatives tried to continue with the best tradition of research
and teaching of mathematics in Europe before the war. Perhaps the most
fundamental initiative in this sense came from Bourbaki, which was
favoured by the founding in 1958 of the Institut des Hautes Études
Scientifiques (IHÉS), one of the most prestigious scientific institutions in
Europe to date.
IHÉS was founded by Leon Motchane, a business-man of Russian
origin who loved mathematics, with the intention of creating an institution
inspired and modelled upon the IAS of Princeton. With the help of Robert
Oppenheimer, then director of the IAS, and with the financial support of
various industrial groups and the French government, Motchane was able
to inaugurate the IHÉS in 1958, a place where “everything would be
organized so that the people had the highest degree of intellectual freedom
possible.”1 Motchane’s original idea was to establish an institute dedicated
to fundamental research in three areas: mathematics, theoretical physics
and methodology of the human sciences, but unfortunately the last area
never managed to have a place at the IHÉS.
In spite of the economic difficulties of the first years, the IHÉS was
remarkably successful in recruiting Jean Dieudonné and Alexandre
Grothendieck for the first two vacancies of mathematics and in attracting
as invited researchers some of the most brilliant mathematicians of the
moment, such as Michael Atiyah (1929- ), Shiing-Shen Chern (1911-
2004), Friedrich Hirzebruch (1927-2012) and André Weil. In 1960, the
prestigious books series “Les Publications de l’IHÉS” was also launched,
initially directed by Dieudonné.
The creation of the IHÉS took place at the time that Bourbaki was
exercising its maximum influence in France and worldwide. Dieudonné,
one of the founding fathers of Bourbaki, and Grothendiek, one of the most
prominent Bourbaki mathematicians active in the late 1950s, regularly
gave seminars at the IHÉS since the beginning of its activity. Many other
members of Bourbaki, such as Claude Chevalley, Jean-Pierre Serre and
Armand Borel, attended Grothendiek’s seminars at the IHÉS. In 1971,

1
In the words of his son Didier Motchane (http://www.ihes.fr/jsp/ site/ Portal. jsp?
Page_id=20).
From Göttingen to Princeton and Paris 237
Pierre Cartier, another member of Bourbaki, began his long association

with the IHÉS as a visiting professor.
IHÉS was, at least during the first ten years of its existence, Bourbaki’s
Göttingen. In the same way that, until the rise of Nazism, any
mathematician or physicist who understood German minimally had as his
greatest aspiration to work with Hilbert, Weyl and Noether at Göttingen,
the IHÉS, located in Bures-sur-Yvette, next to Paris, would become the
Mecca of French-speaking scientists (but also Anglophones, since
Bourbaki has traditionally been bilingual) in the post-war period.
From the first moment of its creation, the IHÉS has maintained strong
ties with the international community of mathematicians and physicists
around the world, especially the United States. In this way, the influence
of Bourbaki and the IHÉS spread throughout the world, as had happened
in the past with Hilbert and Göttingen. A clear example of this is found in
the figure of Alexandre Grothendieck, winner in 1966 of the Fields medal
for his work on algebraic geometry and the most representative
mathematician of the third generation of Bourbaki.
Assisted by Dieudonné, under whose direction he had received his
doctoral degree, Grothendieck began working in 1958 on the book
Éléments de géométrie algébrique (Elements of Algebraic Geometry),
published in eight fascicles by the IHÉS between 1960 and 1967. He also
ran the mythical Séminaire de géométrie algébrique (Seminar of Algebraic
Geometry) at the IHÉS from 1960 to 1969, which would completely
reshape the field of algebraic geometry. As one of the attendees at his
seminar pointed out, his way of working was unique: He did not want to
solve difficult or famous mathematical problems; his goal was to achieve a
thorough and comprehensive understanding of the underlying structures in
such a way that solutions to those problems fall like ripe fruit alone.
In any case, the reformulation of algebraic geometry carried out by
Grothendieck has made possible some spectacular results, such as the
Riemann-Roch-Hirzebruch theorem (by Grothendieck himself), the
famous Weil’s conjectures (Grothendieck again and Pierre Deligne),
Mordell’s conjecture (for which Gerd Faltings (1954- ) received the Fields
Medal in 1984) and, ultimately, a special case of the Taniyama-Shimura
conjecture, from which follows the Last Fermat Theorem, demonstrated
by Andrew Wiles (1953- ) with the help of Richard Taylor (1962- ) in
1995. In this sense, there is no doubt that the language and methods
introduced by Grothendieck are part of the landscape of modern
mathematics and one of the most important sources of research today.
The influence of the IHÉS and Bourbaki through Grothendieck quickly
spread throughout the world during the last quarter of the twentieth century.
238 Epilogue
Fig. 24-2 Alexandre Grothendieck lecturing at the Seminar of Algebraic

Geometry, probably between 1962 and 1964, with Jean Dieudonné to his left and
Claude Chevalley to his right
Oscar Zariski (1899-1986), a professor of mathematics at Harvard and one

of the key figures in the extension and generalization of algebraic
geometry, sent his students to the Grothendieck seminar to know about
what was cooking there so that later, back at Harvard, they could explain
the latest news they had learned. Among these students was David
Mumford (1937- ), who extended Hilbert’s ideas on the theory of
invariants, reformulating them in the language of Grothendieck’s algebraic
geometry. This won him the Fields Medal in 1974 and helped to create a
powerful research group in algebraic geometry in the United States. This is
perhaps a good example of Hilbert’s lasting inheritance in contemporary
mathematics and a good way to close this essay.
APPENDIX
THE HILBERT PROBLEMS REVISITED
PROBLEM 1.
Cantor’s problem on the cardinal number of the continuum.
This problem asks for a proof of the continuum hypothesis (CH), that is,
the conjecture that ʹՅబ ൌ Յଵ (see Chapter 11). In the next International
Congress of Mathematicians at Heidelberg (1904), Julius König (1849-
1913) delivered a lecture in which he argued that ʹՅబ is not an aleph, i.e.,
that the continuum cannot be well-ordered and so that CH was false.
König’s astonishing argument stimulated some of those of the attendees to
explore the matter further. By the next day Zermelo had found an error in
König’s argument. Later the same year, Felix Hausdorff published an
article where he claimed that Թ could be well-ordered and that every
infinite cardinal was an aleph. By the same time, Zermelo published an
epoch-making article in which he proved that every set can be well-
ordered. Three years later he published his famous axiomatization of set
theory (see Chapter 13). In the meanwhile, Hausdorff developed the higher
transfinite in his study of order types and cofinality. In this way, Hilbert’s
first problem passed to the next generation of mathematicians.
Zermelo’s proof that every set can be well-ordered rested on the
controversial axiom of choice (it is actually equivalent to it), so it
remained to prove the consistency of this axiom with the remaining
axioms of set theory. This was done by Kurt Gödel in another epoch-
making article published in 1938. In the same paper, Gödel established
that if ZFC (Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with the axiom of Choice) is
consistent, then so is ZFC+CH. The consistency of ZFC+ CH was
established by Paul Cohen (1934-2007) in 1963 by a method called
forcing. So, by Gödel’s and Cohen’s results, CH was finally shown to be
independent of the axioms of ZFC. This was for Cohen (who was a
formalist) the end of the story. For Gödel (who was a Platonist) it was not.
He proposed to introduce the so-called axioms of infinity (or large-
cardinal axioms) in order to prove this and other hitherto undecidable
sentences. Gödel’s program is still pursued nowadays, but without any
240 Appendix
definitive result regarding the proof of CH. For some mathematicians and
philosophers CH is an undecidable sentence because it is not a well-
defined problem, the view of Solomon Feferman (1928-2016), or because
our experience with constructing models of ZFC+CH and ZFC+ CH௅as
argued by Joel Hamkins (1966- ).
PROBLEM 2.
The compatibility of the arithmetical axioms.
The proof of the consistency of analysis (see Chapter 14) was the crux of
the so-called Hilbert’s program (see Chapter 20). In 1924 W. Ackermann
believed to have achieved a consistency proof of analysis, but when
reviewing of this proof he realized that he had just proved the consistency
of a fragment of arithmetic. In 1927, J. von Neumann improved the
techniques introduced by Ackermann, although he still failed to get the
desired proof of the consistency of analysis. In 1928 at the International
Congress of Mathematicians held in Bologna, Hilbert considered that
thanks to the work of Ackermann and von Neumann “the only remaining
task consists in the proof of an elementary finiteness theorem that is purely
arithmetical.”1 However, Gödel soon demonstrated that Hilbert’s aim of
proving the consistency of analysis was unfeasible. More concretely,
Gödel demonstrated in 1931 the incompleteness of every consistent and
sufficiently strong theory T, such as PA (Peano arithmetic) or ZFC, and
soon after he also showed informally the unprovability in such a theory of
the statement formalizing “T is consistent.” This yielded a negative
solution to Hilbert’s second problem for it established the impossibility for
even weak theories like PA of demonstrating his own consistency. Positive
results (using techniques that Hilbert surely would not have allowed) are
due to Gerhard Gentzen in 1936 and Petr Sergeevich Novikov (1901-
1975) in 1941.
PROBLEM 3.
The equality of the volumes of two tetrahedra
of equal bases and equal altitudes.
The Wallace-Bolyai-Gerwien theorem, proved in the nineteenth century,
says that if polygons ‫ ܣ‬and ‫ ܤ‬are of equal area, polygon ‫ ܣ‬may be cut into

1
Mancosu 1998, 229.
The Hilbert Problems Revisited 241
triangles which may then be rearranged to form polygon ‫ܤ‬. Is there an

analogous theorem for polyhedra ‫ ܣ‬and ‫ ?ܤ‬In other words, if ‫ ܣ‬and ‫ ܤ‬are
polyhedra of the same height and base (and hence volume), is it always
possible to cut ‫ ܣ‬into finitely many polyhedral pieces which may then be
reassembled to yield ‫ ?ܤ‬Hilbert conjectured that this was impossible and
that “it should be our task to give a rigorous proof of its impossibility.”2
The motivation behind Hilbert’s problem was the fact that in plane
Euclidean geometry, the proof of the formula for the area of a triangle in
terms of its base and height can be given by showing that any two such
polygons can be transformed into each other by cutting and pasting. On
the contrary, all the known proofs of the formula for the volume of a
tetrahedron in terms of its base and height involved the calculus–in
particular, the method of exhaustion. Hilbert’s third problem then asked for
the possibility of finding a cut-and-paste argument in order to determine
the volume of a tetrahedron.
This problem was solved in the negative sense by Hilbert’s student
Max Dehn in 1900, in fact before Hilbert’s lecture was delivered. It had
been partially solved four years before by Raoul Bricard (1870-1943).
Dehn’s proof relied on the observation that besides the volume there is one
more quantity that remains invariant under cutting and pasting, the Dehn
invariant. In higher dimensions the same problem can be studied and there
are the Hadwiger invariants. In 1965 Jean Pierre Sydler (1921-1988)
proved that in solid geometry the Dehn invariant is the only extra invariant
besides volume.
PROBLEM 4.
Problem of the straight line as the shortest
distance between two points.
As remarked by Hilbert this is a “problem relating to the foundations of
geometry”3 and indeed one that he formulated precisely in axiomatic
terms. More concretely, Hilbert asks for geometries that sit close to
Euclidean geometry in which all axioms remain valid except the strong
congruence axiom and this axiom is replaced by the requirement that
straight lines are the shortest distance between two points. In the
conclusion to his comments on Problem IV, Hilbert summarizes the
problem by saying that it would be desirable to make a complete and

2
Hilbert 1965, vol. 3, 302.
3
Ibid.
242 Appendix
systematic study of all geometries in which shortest distances are realized

by straight lines. This is a quite broad statement and hence the fourth
problem it has been given different interpretations and generalizations. In
particular, although Hilbert’s formulated the fourth problem as a
foundational problem in an axiomatic setting, most modern approaches
have interpreted it in terms of a metric setting. The first work on this
direction was by Hilbert’s student Georg Hamel (1877-1954) in 1903.
Hamel pointed out that the problem needed to be made more precise, and
that one should ask for all Desarguesian spaces in which straight lines are
the shortest distances between points.4 Nowadays, the problem is
considered (basically) solved in the form of the following (generalized)
theorem of Aleksei Pogorelov (1919-2002): Any ݊-dimensional
Desarguesian space of class ‫ ܥ‬௡ାଶ ǡ ݊ ൒ ʹ, can be obtained by the B-B
construction, a technique based upon integral geometry for obtaining
Desarguesian spaces due to Wilhelm Blaschke (1885-1962) and Herbert
Busemann.
PROBLEM 5.
Sophus Lie’s concept of a continuous group of
transformations without the assumption of the
differentiability of the functions defining the group.
This problem has played a key role in the development of the theory of
topological groups. Hilbert’s fifth problem, like other Hilbert’s problems,
does not have a unique interpretation. The most common formulation of
Hilbert’s fifth problem is whether a locally Euclidean topological group is
a Lie group. A Lie group is a group ‫ ܩ‬ൌ ሺ‫ܩ‬ǡήሻ which is also a smooth
manifold, such that the group operations ή‫ ܩ ׷‬ൈ ‫ ܩ ื ܩ‬and ሺሻିଵ ‫ื ܩ ׷‬
‫ ܩ‬are smooth maps.5

4
A Desarguesian space is a space of geodesics ሺܺǡ ݀ሻሻ(a ‫ܩ‬-space) in which the
role of geodesics is played by ordinary straight lines. The name comes from the
fact that, for ݊ ൌ ʹ, it is required that Desargues theorem and its converse are
valid; for dimension ݊ ൐ ʹ, it is required that any point in ܺ lies in one plane.
These conditions are equivalent to Hilbert’s demand that we keep the strong
congruence axiom and replace it by the requirement that ordinary lines are the
shortest distance between points.
5
For a function to be smooth, it has to have continuous derivatives up to a certain
order, say ݇. We say then that the function is ‫ ܥ‬௞ . So smoothness implies

Hilbert’s question is thus whether the requirement of smoothness in the

definition of Lie group is redundant. To see the relation of Hilbert’s
question so formulated to the above formulation, let us relax the notion of
a Lie group to that of a topological group. A topological group is a group
‫ ܩ‬ൌ ሺ‫ܩ‬ǡήሻ, that is also a topological space, in such a way that the group
operations ή‫ ܩ ׷‬ൈ ‫ ܩ ื ܩ‬and ሺሻିଵ ‫ ܩ ื ܩ ׷‬are continuous.
Clearly, every Lie group is a topological group (just erase the
smooth structure). Furthermore, such topological groups are still locally
Euclidean.6 The converse of this statement, i.e., that locally Euclidean
topological groups are Lie groups, was established by Andrew Gleason
(1921-2008), and by Deane Montgomery and Leo Zippin (1905-1995) in a
couple of articles published in 1952.7 This solved Hilbert’s fifth problem,
at least in its most common formulation given today.
PROBLEM 6.
Mathematical treatment of the axioms of physics
According to Hilbert “the investigations on the foundations of geometry
suggest the problem: To treat in the same manner, by means of axioms,
those physical sciences in which mathematics plays an important part; in
the first rank are the theory of probabilities and mechanics.”8 To
understand Hilbert’s statement of the problem we have to recall that
Geometry itself was for Hilbert a physical science (see Chapter 3 and
Chapter 7) and that he had already axiomatized it in 1900 (see Chapter 8),
so that he could think of it as a model for the mathematical treatment of
the axioms of other physical sciences.
Hilbert’s approach to the foundations of physics was always via the
axiomatic method. From 1912 to 1914 Hilbert applied the axiomatic
method to the kinetic theory of gases and the elementary theory of
radiation. By 1915 he applied it to what he then called the Foundations of
Physics, that is, the formulation of a unified theory of gravitational fields

continuity, but not the other way around. There are functions that are continuous
everywhere, but nowhere differentiable.
6
A topological group is called locally Euclidean if it has a neighbourhood of the
identity that is homeomorphic to a Euclidean space Թ௡ , i.e., if it is a topological
manifold.
7
Gleason, A. M. “Groups without small subgroups,” Ann. of math., 56 (1952):
193–212. Montgomery, D. and Zippin, L. “Small subgroups of finite dimensional
groups,” Ann. of math., 56 (1952): 213–241.
8
Hilbert 1965, vol. 3, 306.
244 Appendix
based on Mie’s theory of matter (see Chapter 16). In the opening

paragraphs of his First Communication on the Foundations of Physics
Hilbert announced that “in the following௅in the sense of the axiomatic
method௅I would like to develop, essentially from two simple axioms, a
new system of basic equations of physics, of ideal beauty and containing, I
believe, simultaneously the solution to the problems of Einstein and of
Mie.”9 These axioms are Mie’s Axiom of the World Function (Axiom I)
and the Axiom of General Invariance (Axiom II), although in the proofs
Hilbert uses a third axiom, the Axiom of Space and Time (Axiom III).
Hilbert’s sixth problem has inspired several lines of research and its
mathematical content has changed in time. It is thus more a “programmatic
call” than a mathematical problem. As a response to this programmatic
call many parts of the physical sciences have been axiomatized with great
success. Regarding the two fields specifically mentioned by Hilbert in the
statement of his programmatic call, mechanics and probability, the first
was axiomatized quite early by Hamel in 1903, whereas the second was
definitively axiomatized by Kolmogorov in 1933. Also, as a direct
response to Hilbert’s call, Carathéodory axiomatizations of
thermodynamics in 1909 and of special relativity in 1924 should be
mentioned. Another independent axiomatization of special relativity was
given by Alfred Robb (1873-1936) in 1914. As we already know, the first
axiomatizations of quantum mechanics in terms of operators on Hilbert
spaces were presented by Paul Dirac in 1930 and by John von Neumann in
1932. Modern axiomatizations of relativistic quantum field theory, such as
the axiomatizations by Arthur Wightman (1922-2013) and by Rudolf Haag
(1922-2016) and Daniel Kastler (1926-2015), are often viewed as
realizations of Hilbert’s program of axiomatization of physical theories.
PROBLEM 7.
Irrationality and transcendence of certain numbers.
This problem asks whether “the expression ߙ ఉ , for an algebraic base ߙ
and an irrational algebraic exponent ߚ , e. g., the number ʹξଶ or
݁ గ ൌ ݅ ିଶ௜ ǡ always represents a transcendental or at least an irrational
number.”10 It was solved by Alexander Gelfond (1906-1968) in 1934 and
Theodor Schneider (1911-1988) in 1935. In a previous paper of 1929
Gelfond “proved that ݁ గ is actually transcendental and indicated how his

9
Hilbert 2009, 28-29.
10
Hilbert 1965, vol. 3, 308.
method could be used to prove transcendentality whenever ߚ belongs to an

imaginary quadratic field. The extension to real quadratic fields was given
by C. L. Siegel (unpublished) and R. A. Kuzmin in 1930. Gelfond returned
to the question later and in 1934 he could give a complete solution of
Hilbert’s problem which was followed in 1935 by a more elementary
solution obtained independently by Th. Schneider, one of Siegel’s pupils.
The proof by Gelfond, though more advanced, has quite a simple basis and
gives a beautiful example of teamwork between algebraic and analytical
ideas.”11
PROBLEM 8. Problems of prime numbers.

This problem deals with the “distribution of prime numbers” and more
concretely with the Riemann Hypothesis, although Hilbert mentions some
generalizations of it and also related problems such as the Goldbach
conjecture. The Riemann hypothesis is the most famous and important of
the unsolved conjectures in mathematics. It is a statement about the zeros
of the so-called Riemann zeta function.
As it is well known, the distribution of prime numbers
ሺʹǡ ͵ǡ ͷǡ ͹ǡ ͳͳǡ ͳ͵ǡ ͳ͹ǡ ͳͻǡ ǥ ሻ among the natural numbers does not follow
any regular pattern. However, Riemann observed that the frequency in
which prime numbers appear is very closely related to the behavior of the
function ߞሺ‫ݏ‬ሻ ൌ ͳ ൅ ͳΤʹ௦ ൅ ͳΤ͵௦ ൅ ͳΤͶ௦ ൅ ǥ , later called the Riemann
Zeta function. The Riemann hypothesis asserts that all interesting
solutions of the equation ߞሺ‫ݏ‬ሻ ൌ Ͳ lie on a certain vertical straight line.
Although this has been checked with computer aid for the first 1.5 billion
zeroes, there is no proof that it is true for every interesting solution.
According to many mathematicians, the Riemann Hypothesis is the most
important open problem in pure mathematics, since its solution would
shed light on the inextricable misteries of the distribution of prime
numbers. It is one of the seven “Millennium Prize Problems” for which the
the Clay Mathematics Institute has designated a $7 million prize fund,
with $1 million allocated to the solution of each problem.12

11
Hille 1942, 654.
12
For a technical and complete exposition of the problem and the mathematical
developments arising from it, see the Official Problem Description by E. Bombieri
(http://www.claymath.org/sites/default/files/official_problem_description.pdf).
246 Appendix
As remarked by Hilbert, following Problem no. 8 come “three more

special problems in number theory: one on the laws of reciprocity, one on
Diophantine equations, and a third from the realm of quadratic forms.”13
PROBLEM 9.
Proof of the most general law of reciprocity
in any number field.
We have extensively dealt with the origins of this problem in Chapter 4.
As remarked there, Hilbert himself had contributed to the solution of this
problem in 1895 and 1896 with a generalization of the reciprocity law by
means of the norm residue symbol, later called Hilbert symbol. After
Hilbert, Ph. Furtwängler, T. Takagi, H. Hasse and E. Artin made important
contributions to the study of reciprocity laws. In 1927 Artin gave
reciprocity laws for general number fields. Artin’s reciprocity law is the
crux of class field theory. In 1950 Igor Shafarevich (1923-2017) settled the
analogous question of reciprocity laws for function fields. Artin’s
reciprocity law is usually considered a partial solution of Hilbert’s 9th
problem, since it deals with Abelian extension of algebraic number fields.
The analogue problem for non-Abelian extensions, which is intimately
connected with Hilbert’s 12th problem, is still an open problem.
PROBLEM 10.
Determination of the solvability of a Diophantine equation.
A Diophantine equation is a polynomial equation ܲሺ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ ሻ with
integers as coefficients. It is solvable if there are integral solutions. For
example, the Fermat equation ‫ ݔ‬௡ ൅ ‫ ݕ‬௡ ൌ ‫ ݖ‬௡ for a given natural number n
is a Diophantine equation which has infinitely many solutions for ݊ ൌ ͳǡ ʹ
and no solutions for larger n. Hilbert tenth problem asks for a computing
algorithm (a decision procedure) which tells of a given Diophantine
equation whether it is solvable or not. The Russian mathematician Yuri
Matiyasevich (1947- ), working on previous work by Martin Davis (1928-
), Julia Robinson (1919-1985) and Hilary Putnam (1926-2016), showed in
1970 that there is no such algorithm, so giving a negative solution to
Hilbert’s tenth problem.

13
Hilbert 1965, vol. 3, 310.
A couple of remarks are in order: First, as noted by Davis, “the way in

which the problem has been resolved is very much in the spirit of Hilbert’s
address in which he spoke of the conviction among mathematicians ‫ދ‬that
every definite mathematical problem must necessarily be susceptible of a
precise settlement, either in the form of an actual answer to the question
asked, or by the proof of the impossibility of its solution …‫]…[ ތ‬
Matiyasevich’s negative solution of Hilbert’s tenth problem is of just this
character. It is […] a ‫ދ‬precise and completely satisfactory‫ ތ‬proof that no
such solution is possible.”14 Second, it is also worth mentioning that the
first steps towards Matiyasevich’s negative solution of Hilbert’s tenth
problem were given by Gödel. For Gödel did not only introduce the
general notion of recursiveness, but he also demonstrated that every
recursive function can be defined by a finite number of existential and
bounded universal quantifiers (which is essential in the Matiyasevich-
Robinson-Davis-Putnam proof of the unsolvability of Hilbert’s tenth
problem).
PROBLEM 11.
Quadratic forms with any algebraic numerical coefficients.
Quadratic forms were first studied over Ժ, by all the great number theorists
from Fermat to Dirichlet. A major portion of Gauss’s Disquisitiones
Arithmeticae was devoted to the study of binary quadratic forms over the
integers. By the late 19th century the concept was generalized since it was
realized that it is easier to solve equations with coefficients in a field ‫ܭ‬
than in an integral domain like Ժ and that a firm understanding of the set
of solutions in the fraction field of ‫ ܭ‬is prerequisite to understanding the
set of solutions in ‫ ܭ‬itself. In this regard, a general theory of quadratic
forms with Է-coefficients was developed by Minkowski in the 1880s and
extended and completed by Hasse in his 1921 dissertation.
This problem asks for the classification of quadratic forms over
algebraic number fields. A quadratic form over a field ‫ ܭ‬is a polynomial
‫݌‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ൌ ‫݌‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ ሻ ‫ܭ א‬ሾ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ ሿ, with coefficients in ‫ܭ‬, such that each
monomial term has total degree ʹ, that is,
‫݌‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ൌ ෍ ܽ௜௝ ‫ݔ‬௜ ‫ݔ‬௝

ଵஸ௜ஸ௝ஸ௡

14
Davis 1973, 233-34.
248 Appendix
with ܽ௜௝ ‫ܭ א‬. Let ‫݌‬ǡ ‫ ݍ‬be two ݊-ary quadratic forms. We say that they are
equivalent if there is an invertible homogeneous linear substitution of the
variables ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ which takes the form ‫ ݍ‬to the form ‫݌‬. For example, if
‫݌‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ǡ ‫ݕ‬ሻ is the form ‫ ݔ‬ଶ െ ‫ ݕ‬ଶ and ‫ݍ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ǡ ‫ݕ‬ሻ is ‫ݕݔ‬, the substitution ‫ ݔ‬฽ ‫ ݔ‬൅
‫ݕ‬ǡ ‫ ݕ‬฽ ‫ ݔ‬െ ‫ ݕ‬changes ‫ ݍ‬to ‫ ݌‬since ‫ݍ‬ሺ‫ ݔ‬൅ ‫ݕ‬ǡ ‫ ݔ‬െ ‫ݕ‬ሻ ൌ ሺ‫ ݔ‬൅ ‫ݕ‬ሻሺ‫ ݔ‬െ ‫ݕ‬ሻ ൌ
‫ ݔ‬ଶ െ ‫ ݕ‬ଶ ൌ ‫݌‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ǡ ‫ݕ‬ሻ.
As remarked by M. Hazewinkel, “the problem is to classify quadratic
forms up to this equivalence. This was solved in [Hasse, 1924] by the
Hasse–Minkowski theorem and the Hasse invariant. The theorem says that
two quadratic forms over a number field ‫ ܭ‬are equivalent if and only if
they are equivalent over all of the local field ‫ܭ‬௣ for all primes ‫ ݌‬of ‫ܭ‬. For
instance for ‫ ܭ‬ൌ Է, the rational numbers, two forms over Է are equivalent
if and only if they are equivalent over the extensions Թ, the real numbers,
and the ‫݌‬-adic numbers Է௣ for all prime numbers ‫݌‬. This reduces the
problem to classification over local fields, which is handled by the Hasse
invariant (apart from rank and discriminant).”15
PROBLEM 12.
Extension of Kronecker’s theorem on Abelian fields
to any algebraic realm of rationality.
This problem asks for the extension of the Kronecker-Weber theorem on
Abelian extensions of the rational number to any base number field. As we
already know, Kronecker-Weber theorem asserts that every finite Abelian
extension of Է is a subfield of a cyclotomic field. Recall that a cyclotomic
field is a number field of the form Էሺߦ௠ ሻ, where ߦ௠ ൌ ሺʹߨ݅Τ݉ሻ (see
Chapter 4). It was Kronecker’s Jugendtraum (dream of youth) to find
similar functions whose values could generate analogues of cyclotomic
fields over other number fields. The attempt to prove Kronecker
Jugendtraum, i.e., Hilbert’s twelfth problem, has led to many important
theories in mathematics, particularly class field theory and complex
multiplication. The problem has been settled for certain number fields;
e.g., imaginary quadratic fields and their generalization, the so-called CM
fields.

15
Hazewinkel 2005, 737. The paper mentioned is Hasse, H. “Äquivalenz
quadratischer formeln in einem beliebigen algebraischer Zahlkörper,” J. reine und
angew. Math., 153 (1924): 113-130.
Hilbert’s statement of Kronecker’s Jugendtraum in his twelfth problem

first considers the special case whether all Abelian extensions of
imaginary quadratic fields could be obtained by adjoining values of the
elliptic modular function ݆ሺ‫ݖ‬ሻ. He then passes to the general case and asks
for “the extension of Kronecker’s theorem to the case that, in place of the
realm of rational numbers or of the imaginary quadratic field, any
algebraic field whatever is laid down as realm of rationality.”16 The first
problem was worked out intensively in the first decades of the twentieth
century by Weber, Blumenthal, Hecke, Takagi and Hasse, among others.
These works established the fact that a certain elliptic modular function
݆ሺ߬ሻ generates the Hilbert class field of ‫ܭ‬, where ‫ ܭ‬is an imaginary
quadratic field. These results were generalized in the early fifties by Max
Deuring (1907-1984), Shimura, Yutaka Taniyama (1927-1958), Weil and
others to a much wider class of number fields, the CM fields௅so named by
their connection with the theory of complex multiplication.
PROBLEM 13.
Impossibility of the solution of the general equation of the
seventh degree by means of functions of only two variables.
This problem asks whether it is possible to write every continuous
function of three variables as a superposition of continuous functions of
two variables. A superposition is just a composition of functions. For
example,
݂ሺ‫ݔ‬ǡ ‫ݕ‬ǡ ‫ݖ‬ሻ ൌ ‫ ܨ‬ቀ݃ሺ‫ݔ‬ǡ ‫ݕ‬ሻǡ ݄൫݆ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻǡ ݇ሺ‫ݖ‬ሻ൯ቁ
is a superposition of functions of one and two variables. The question is
then whether all functions of three variables are representable by functions
of two variables. Hilbert conjectured a negative answer:
It is probable that the root of the equation of the seventh degree is a

function of its coefficients which […] cannot be constructed by a finite
number of insertions of functions of two arguments. To see this, the proof
would be necessary that the equation of the seventh degree ݂ ଻ ൅ ‫ ݂ݔ‬ଷ ൅
‫ ݂ݕ‬ଶ ൅ ‫ ݂ݖ‬൅ ͳ ൌ Ͳ is not solvable with the help of any continuous functions
of only two arguments.17

16
Hilbert 1965, vol. 3, 312.
17
Ibid., 314.
250 Appendix
In 1954, Anatoli Vitushkin (1931-2004) proved that there are continuously

differentiable functions which cannot be written as a superposition of
continuously differentiable functions of three variables. This was a
remarkable first result in line with Hilbert’s conjecture. However, Andrey
Kolmogorov proved in 1956 that every function of ݊ variables can be
written as a superposition of functions of three variables. The next year,
his student Vladimir Arnol’d (1937-2010) reduced this number to two.
These results culminated in 1957 with the so-called Kolmogorov
Superposition theorem, which asserts that every continuous function of
two or more variables can be written as a superposition of continuous
functions of just one variable along with just one function of two
variables, namely addition. This result gives a positive solution to the 13th
problem, although a negative one to Hilbert’s conjecture about it.
The problem is usually considered as partially resolved. This is
because in his presentation of the 13th problem, Hilbert did not make clear
what kind of functions he had in mind. Indeed, it seems from Hilbert’s
1927 paper “Über die Gleichung neunten Grades,” that he was originally
thinking about algebraic functions when he posed this problem. This is
also the interpretation given by Arnol’d and Shimura in the article
Superposition of algebraic functions.18 For these kinds of functions the
problem is still unresolved.
PROBLEM 14.
Proof of the finiteness of certain complete systems
of functions.
The fourteenth problem may be formulated as follows: Let ݇ be a field and
‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ algebraically independent elements over ݇. Let ‫ ܭ‬be a subfield
of ݇ሾ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ ሿ containing ‫ܭ‬. Is the ring ݇ሾ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ ሿ ‫ ܭ ת‬finitely
generated over ݇?
Hilbert’s motivation for this problem came from its positive answer in
the case of algebraic invariant theory: If ሺ݇ሻ ൌ Ͳ, ‫ ܩ‬is a linear
algebraic group acting on a polynomial ring ݇ሾ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ ሿ and ‫ ܭ‬is the field
of ‫ܩ‬-invariant rational functions, then ݇ሾ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ ሿ ‫ ܭ ת‬is the ring of ‫ܩ‬-
invariant polynomials over ݇. As we already know, Hilbert had proved
that this ring is finitely generated (see Chapter 2). However, the answer to
the 14th problem is negative: Masayoshi Nagata (1927-2008) found in

18
Browder 1976, 45-46.
1959 a counterexample, also in this setting of rings of invariants, showing

that ݇ሾ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ ሿ ‫ ܭ ת‬may require an infinite number of generators.
As David Mumford has written in his article on “Hilbert’s Fourteenth
Problem. The Finite Generation of Subrings such as Rings of Invariants,”
“it would appear that after Hilbert’s discovery of the extremely general
finiteness principle on which his proof in the invariant case was based,
namely “Hilbert’s basis theorem” on the finite generation of all ideals in
݇ሾ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ ሿ, Hilbert was overly optimistic about finiteness results in other
algebraic contexts. However my belief is that it was not at all a blind alley:
that on the one hand its failure reveals some very significant and far-
reaching subtleties in the category of varieties; and that the search for
cases where it and related geometric questions are correct is a very
important area of research in algebraic geometry.”19 This was indeed the
case as the intriguing 1954 article “Interpretations algebrico-geometriques
du quatorzieme probleme de Hilbert” by Oscar Zariski witnessed.
PROBLEM 15.
Rigorous foundation of Schubert’s enumerative calculus.
This problem asks for the justification of Hermann Schubert’s (1848-
1911) enumerative calculus and the verification of the numbers he
obtained. Hilbert’s statement of the problem is as follows:
To establish rigorously and with an exact determination of the limits of
their validity those geometrical numbers which Schubert especially has
determined on the basis of the so-called principle of special position, or
conservation of number, by means of the enumerative calculus developed
by him.20
The Schubert Calculus is a formal calculus in which geometric conditions

of figures are represented by algebraic symbols in order to solve problems
in enumerative geometry. An example of the kind of problems the
Schubert calculus deals with is the following: How many linear subspaces
of projective space satisfy incidence conditions imposed by other linear

19
Ibid., 431-32.
20
Hilbert 1965, vol. 3, 312. Schubert’s treatment of enumerative geometry rested
heavily on the principle of special position or conservation of number. This
principle was introduced in the context of projective geometry by Poncelet, who
called it the principle of continuity (see Chapter 3). Despite the criticism of Cauchy
and Study, among others, the principle came into widespread use.
252 Appendix
subspaces? Or, to put another example: How many lines in projective 3-

space meet 4 given lines? The Schubert calculus originated in the work of
Michel Chasles in the enumerative theory of conics and was systematized
and extended by Schubert in his 1879 treatise Kalkül der abzählenden
Geometrie (Calculus of enumerative geometry). The justification of
Schubert’s enumerative calculus was a major theme of 20th century
algebraic geometry and Intersection Theory provides a satisfactory
framework for the treatment of the foundations of the Schubert calculus.
However, as remarked by S. L. Kleiman in the article “Problem 15.
Rigorous Foundation of Schubert’s Enumerative Calculus,” “to claim that
the development of an intersection theory provides a complete solution to
Hilbert’s fifteenth problem is to give the problem a narrow interpretation,
for an intersection theory is only the first step on the road toward the
validation of the geometrical numbers of classical enumerative geometry,
and in both the statement and the explanation of the problem Hilbert
makes clear his interest in the efficient production of accurate geometric
numbers.”21 For example, in his 1879 book, Schubert finds the number
666, 841, 048 of quadric surfaces tangent to 9 given quadric surfaces in 3-
space, and the number 5, 819, 539, 783, 680 of twisted cubic curves
tangent to 12 given quadric surfaces in 3-space. However, up to date “we
cannot vouch for the accuracy of these two spectacular numbers, nor do
we even know whether Schubert’s method is basically sound.”22
PROBLEM 16.
Problem of the topology of algebraic curves and surfaces.
The problem, as stated by Hilbert, splits in two different parts. The first
part asks for an investigation of the relative positions of the branches of
real algebraic curves and surfaces of degree n. In 1876 Axel
Harnack (1851-1888) had found that algebraic curves in the real projective
plane of degree n could have no more than ሺ݊ଶ െ ͵݊ ൅ ͶሻΤʹ separated
connected components. He also showed how to construct curves with this
maximum number of components, the so-called M-curves. In his
investigation of the M-curves of degree 6, Hilbert found that the 11
components were always disposed according to certain constrains. The
first part of problem 16 then asks for a thorough investigation of the
possible configurations of the components of the M-curves and for similar

21
Browder 1976, 455-56.
22
Ibid., 445.
investigation of surfaces with the maximum number of components. For

algebraic curves of degree 6 the problem was finally solved in 1970 by
Dmitrii Gudkov (1918-1992). For curves of degree 8 the problem remains
unsolved.
The second part of the problem asks for the determination of the
maximum number of limit cycles in a planar polynomial vector field of
degree n and an investigation of their relative positions. In 1991/92 Yulij
Ilyashenko (1943- ) and Jean Écalle (1950- ) proved independently that
every planar polynomial vector field has only finitely many limit cycles.
However, the question whether there exists a maximum number of limit
cycles of planar polynomial vector fields of degree n remains unsolved
even for quadratic polynomials. As remarked by Ilyashenko, “there were
several attempts to solve it that failed. Yet the problem inspired significant
progress in the geometric theory of planar differential equations, as well as
bifurcation theory, normal forms, foliations and some topics in algebraic
geometry.”23
PROBLEM 17.
Expression of definite forms by squares.
Hilbert’s 17th problem is concerned with the representation of positive
definite rational functions as a sum of squares. A rational function
݂ሺ‫ݔ‬ଵ ǡ ǥ ǡ ‫ݔ‬௡ ሻ is positive definite if it takes non-negative values in all points
of Թ௡ where it is defined. Hilbert conjectured that such a function can be
written as a sum of squares of rational functions with real coefficients. The
case ݊ ൌ ʹ had been settled by Hilbert in a paper of 1893. The general
case was solved affirmatively by Emil Artin in 1927. More concretely,
Artin proved Hilbert’s conjecture for rational functions defined over real
closed fields (such as, for example, the real numbers) and over arbitrary
fields under the condition that they have only Archimedean orderings (this
is the case, for example, of algebraic number fields). Artin proof was not
constructive and used the machinery of the Artin-Schreier theory of
formally real fields. A constructive solution to Hilbert’s 17th problem was
given by Charles N. Delzell (1953- ) in 1984.

23
Ilyashenko 2002, 301.
254 Appendix
PROBLEM 18.
Building up of space from congruent polyhedral.
This problem raises three different questions. The first question asks
whether there are only finitely many types of subgroups of the group ‫ܧ‬ሺ݊ሻ
of isometries of Թ௡ with compact fundamental domain. It was answered
affirmatively by Ludwig Bieberbach in 1910, who also gave estimates of
the number of these subgroups in 2-space and 3-space. These subgroups
are now called Bieberbach groups.
The second question asks whether Euclidean space can be filled
without overlap by congruent copies of a certain polyhedron which is not
the fundamental domain for any Bieberbach group. It was answered in the
negative by Karl Reinhardt (1895-1941) in 1928 by means of a 3-
dimensional counter-example. A simpler 2-dimensional counter-example
was given by Heinrich Heesch (1906-1995) in 1935.
Finally, Hilbert raises the following question: “How can one arrange
most densely in space an infinite number of solids with the same given
form, e.g., spheres with given radii […], that is, how can one so fit them
together that the ratio of the filled to the unfilled space may be as great as
possible?”24 As J. Milnor has written in the article “Hilbert’s Problem 18:
On Crystalographic Groups, Fundamental Domains, and on Sphere
Packing”: “For 2-dimensional disks this problem has been solved by Thue
and Fejes Tóth, who showed that the expected hexagonal (or honeycomb)
packing of circular disks in the plane is the densest possible. However, the
corresponding problem in 3 dimensions remains unsolved. This is
scandalous situation since the (presumably) correct answer has been
known since the time of Gauss […] All that is missed is a proof.”25
PROBLEM 19.
Are the solutions of the regular problems in the calculus
of variations always necessarily analytic?
Problems 19, 20 and 23 deal with the calculus of variations. As noted by
E. Bombieri in the paper “Variational Problems and Elliptic Functions,”
“this problem of regularity, together with the problem of existence of
solutions, form two central questions in the theory of variational

24
Hilbert 1965, vol. 3, 319.
25
Browder 1976, 500. For a more updated view of current research trying to
answer this question see Hazewinkel (2005, 740).
problems.”26 These are precisely the questions asked in problems 19 and

20 respectively. The calculus of variations is a field of mathematical
analysis concerned with the problem of finding functions for which the
value of certain functionals (usually definite integrals involving functions
and their derivatives) is either the largest or the smallest possible.
Functions that maximize or minimize functionals may be found using the
Euler-Lagrange equation. By a regular variational problem Hilbert
understands a variational problem whose Euler-Lagrange equation is an
elliptic partial differential equation with analytic coefficients. Hilbert’s
19th problem asks whether the solutions of these equations always have
analytic coefficients. It was answered affirmatively by Sergei Bernstein in
his 1904 thesis, where he showed that ‫ ܥ‬ଷ solutions of non-linear elliptic
analytic equations in 2 variables are analytic. According to Bombieri,
“Bernstein result was later improved and generalized to several variables
and elliptic systems by the work of several authors, among which Gevrey,
Giraud, Lichtenstein, H. Lewy, E. Hopf, T. Rado, I. Petrowsky and
Bernstein himself.”27
PROBLEM 20.
The general problem of boundary values.
In this problem, Hilbert turns his attention to the question of the existence
of solutions of partial differential equations when the boundary values are
prescribed. More specifically, he asks whether every regular variational
problem does not have a solution, provided certain assumptions regarding
given boundary conditions are satisfied […] and provided also if need be
that the notion of a solution shall be suitably extended.”28 As examples of
boundary conditions, Hilbert mentions that the functions concerned are
continuous or have one or more derivatives. As remarked by J. Serrin in
his paper “The Solvability of Boundary Value Problems”:
Several main ideas have become dominant in studying the existence of
solutions of elliptic partial differential equations satisfying given boundary
conditions, namely:
I. Continuation of solutions along a parameter, for which the problem
varies from a known situation to a desired one.

26
Browder 1976, 526.
27
Ibid.
28
Hilbert 1965, vol. 3, 322.
256 Appendix
II. The a priori estimation of the magnitude of the partial derivatives,

depending only on the structure of the equation, the boundary data, and the
domain.
III. A functional-analytic approach, guaranteeing the existence of a weak,
or generalized solution of the given problem.29
The main agent in the dissemination of the first two approaches was Sergei
Bernstein in a series of papers written between 1910 and 1912. His work
was clarified by Juliusz Schauder (1899-1943) in 1934 and complemented
by the work of Georges Giraud (1889-1943). The third approach was
initiated by Hilbert and brought to the so-called direct method of the
calculus of variations, which was later developed by Richard Courant,
Leonida Tonelli (1885-1946) and Charles Morrey (1907-1984), among
others.30
PROBLEM 21.
Proof of the existence of linear differential equations
having a prescribed monodromic group.
More specifically, Hilbert’s 21th problem is to show that “there always
exists a linear differential equation of the Fuchsian class, with given
singular points and monodromic group.”31 Linear differential equations
defined in an open, connected set ܵ in the complex plane have a
monodromy group, which is a linear representation of the fundamental
group of ܵ, summarising all the analytic continuations round loops
within ܵ. Literally, Hilbert’s problem is the inverse problem, namely that
of constructing the equation, given a monodromic representation.
However, it should be noted that although Hilbert talks of “equation” what
he had in mind was undoubtedly “system of equations,” since it was
already known at that time that for equations the problem had a negative
answer. So Hilbert’s problem asks whether there always exists a Fuchsian
system with given singularities and monodromy. In a paper of 1908, Josip
Plemelj (1873-1967) answered affirmatively a problem analogue to
Hilbert’s 21th problem concerning regular systems instead of Fuchsian

29
Browder 1976, 509.
30
Much more could be said about the mathematical research in the twentieth
century inspired by Hilbert’s 19th and 20th problems. We refer the interested
reader to the papers by Serrin and Bombieri already mentioned (In Browder 1976,
507-24 and 525-35 respectively).
31
Hilbert 1965, vol. 3, 322.
ones. For many years this was thought also a positive solution to Hilbert’s
problem. However, in 1989 Andrei Bolibruch (1950-2003) found a
counterexample. He constructed a monodromic system with Fuchsian
singularities and a not Fuchsian one (thus a not Fuchsian system, although
a regular one), so giving a definitive negative solution to Hilbert’s 21th
problem.
PROBLEM 22.
Uniformization of analytic relations by means
of automorphic functions.
Classical uniformization theory, developed mainly during the last two
decades of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th, was concerned
with proving that every algebraic or analytic curve can be uniformized,
that is, represented parametrically by single-valued (or “uniform”)
functions. Some of the most illustrious mathematicians of that time were
involved on the topic: Friedrich Schottky (1851-1935), Weierstrass, Klein,
Schwarz, Hilbert and Poincaré, among others. The complex 1-dimensional
case was solved by Henri Poincaré and Paul Koebe in 1907 in the form of
the general uniformization theorem, which asserts that if a Riemann
surface (i.e., a connected 1-dimensional complex manifold) is
homeomorphic to an open subset of the complex sphere, then it is
conformally equivalent to an open subset of the complex sphere (a
conformal mapping is a holomorphic bijection between Riemann
surfaces). For higher complex dimensions, Hilbert’s 22nd problem, as well
as various of its generalizations, is still open.
PROBLEM 23.
Further development of the methods of the
calculus of variations.
As remarked by Hilbert, in contrast with the other 22 problems, the 23rd is
not a definite and specific problem, but rather a general problem, namely
“the indication of a branch of mathematics repeatedly mentioned in this
lecture௅which, in spite of the considerable advancement lately given it by
Weierstrass, does not receive the general appreciation which, in my
opinion, is its due௅I mean the calculus of variations.”32 As J. J. Gray has

32
Ibid., 323-24.
258 Appendix
noted, “after the brisk presentation of the previous four problems, the
lengthy disquisition here suggests not only that Hilbert found the topic
very important but that he was beginning to have quite precise ideas about
what could be done to advance it.”33 An excellent and illuminating
exposition on the development of the calculus of variations before and
after 1900 is to be found in the article “Hilbert’s Twenty-Third Problem.
Extensions of the Calculus of Variations” by G. Stampachia.34 Some
modern extensions and links of the calculus of variations with theories
such as optimal control theory and dynamic programming, the theory of
minimal differential geometric objects such as geodesics, minimal surfaces
and Plateau’s problem, the theory of variational inequalities and convex
analysis are also noteworthy.35

33
Gray 2000, 122-24.
34
In Browder (1976, 611-628).
35
See Hazewinkel (2005, 742) for references.
REFERENCE LIST
Alexandroff, P. S. “In Memory of Emmy Noether.” In Dick, 1981, 153-

179 (also in Brewer and Smith,1982, 99-111).
Bell, E. T. “Fifty Years of Algebra in America, 1888-1938.” In
Semicentennial Addresses of the AMS, vol II. New York: American
Mathematical Society, 1938, 1-34.
Bliss, G. A., and Dickson, L. E. “Biographical Memoir of Eliakim
Hastings Moore. 1862-1932.” National Academy of Sciences of the
United States of America. Biographical Memoirs. Volume XVII. Fifth
Memoir, 1935.
Borel, A. “Twenty-Five Years with Nicolas Bourbaki, 1949-1973.”
Notices of the AMS, 45, no. 3(1998): 373-380.
Born, M. “How I became a Physicist.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
XXI, no. 7(1965): 3-6.
—. My Life: Recollections of a Nobel Laureate. New York: Scribner,
1978.
Bourbaki, N. “The Architecture of Mathematics.” The American
Mathematical Monthly, 57, no. 4(1950): 221-232.
Brewer, J. W. and Smith, M. K. (eds.). Emmy Noether: A Tribute to Her
Life and Work. New York: Marcel Dekker, 1982.
Brouwer, L. E. J. Collected Works (vol. 1) (A. Heyting, ed.). Amsterdam:
North-Holland, 1975.
Cayley, A. “On linear transformations”. Cambridge and Dublin
Mathematical Journal 1(1846): 104-122.
Corry, L. “Nicolas Bourbaki and the Concept of Mathematical Structure,”
Synthese, 92, no. 3(1992): 315-348.
—. Modern Algebra and the Rise of Mathematical Structures. Basel and
Boston: Birkhäuser, 1996.
—. “David Hilbert: Geometry and Physics: 1900-1915.” In Gray J. J. (ed.),
The Symbolic Universe: Geometry and Physics (1890-1930), 145-188.
Oxford: University Press, 1999.
—. David Hilbert and the Axiomatization of Physics (1898-1918). The
Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004.
Corry, L., Renn, J. and Stachel, J. “Belated decision in the Hilbert-Einstein
priority dispute.” Science 278(1997): 1270-1273.
260 Reference List
Cox, D. A. Primes of the form ‫ ݔ‬ଶ ൅ ݊‫ ݕ‬ଶ . Fermat, Class Field Theory, and
Complex Multiplication (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley, 2013.
Crilly, T. “Invariant theory”. In Grattan-Guinness, I. (ed.), Companion
Encyclopedia of the History and Philosophy of the Mathematical
Sciences, vol. I, 787–793. London: Routledge, 1994.
Curbera, G. P. Mathematicians of the world, unite! The International
Congress of Mathematicians࣓a human endeavour. Wellesley, MA: A
K Peters, 2009.
Davis, Martin: “Hilbert’s Tenth Problem is Unsolvable.” The American
Mathematical Monthly, vol. 80 (1973):233-269.
Dick, A. Emmy Noether, 1882-1935. Boston: Birkhäuser, 1981.
Dieudonné, J. “The work of Nicholas Bourbaki.” The American
Mathematical Monthly, 77 (1970): 134-145.
—. History of Functional Analysis. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1981.
—. “David Hilbert (1862-1943).” Rev. Integr. Temas Mat. 2, no. 1(1983):
27-33.
Ehrlich, Ph. (ed.). Real Numbers, Generalizations of the Reals, and
Theories of Continua. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers
(Synthese Lybrary, 242). General Introduction by the Editor: vii-xxxii,
1994.
Ewald, W. B. (ed.). From Kant to Hilbert. A Source Book in the
Foundations of Mathematics. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.
Fraenkel, A. A. Recollections of a Jewish Mathematician in Germany.
Birkhäuser, 2016.
Frege, G. Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel. Hamburg: F. Meiner, 1976.
Frei, G. (ed.). Der Briefwechsel David Hilbert-Felix Klein (1886-1918).
Göttingen: Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht,1985.
Freudenthal, H. “The main Trends in the Foundations of Geometry in the
19th Century.” In Nagel, E., Suppes P., and Tarski, A. (eds.), Logic,
Methodology and Philosophy of Science: Proceedings of the 1960
International Congress. Stanford: University Press, 613–621, 1962.
Gauss, F. G. Disquisitiones Arithmeticae. Leipzig: Fleischer, 1801. PURL:
http://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl?PPN235993352.
Gödel, K. Collected Works, Vol. I. Publications 1929–1936 (S. Feferman,
et al., eds.). New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Grattan-Guinness, I. “A sideways Look at Hilbert’s Twenty-three
Problems of 1900.” Notices of the AMS, 47, no. 7(2000): 752-57.
Gray, J. J. The Hilbert Challenge. Oxford: University Press, 2000.
Hazewinkel, M. “David Hilbert, Paper on ‫ދ‬Mathematical Problems‫ތ‬
(1901)”. In Grattan-Guinness, I. (ed.), Landmark Writings in Western
Mathematics 1640-1940. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005.
Hecke, E. Vorlesungen über die Theorie der algebraischen Zahlen.

Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1923.
Heijenoort, J. van (ed.). From Frege to Gödel. A source book in
Mathematical Logic, 1879-1931. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1967.
Hesseling, D. E. Gnomes in the Fog. The Reception of Brouwer’s
Intuitionism in the 1920s. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2003.
Hilbert, D. “Über den Zahlbegriff.” Jahresbericht der Deutschen
Mathematiker-Vereinigung, 8(1900): 180-183.
—. Grundzüge einer allgemeinen Theorie der linearen
Integralgleichungen. Leipzig: Teubner, 1912.
—. “Logische Principien des mathematischen Denkens.” Vorlesungen.
Summer-Semester 1905. Lecture notes by Ernst Hellinger.
Unpublished manuscript. Bibliothek, Mathematisches Institut,
Universität Göttingen (1905)
—. “Elemente und Prinzipien Fragen der Mathematik.” Vorlesungen.
Summer-Semester 1910. Lecture notes by Richard Courant.
Unpublished manuscript. Bibliothek, Mathematisches Institut,
Universität Göttingen (1910).
—. “Prinzipien der Mathematik.” Vorlesungen. Winter-Semester 1917-18.
Lecture notes by Paul Bernays. Bibliothek, Mathematisches Institut,
Universität Göttingen (1917/18).
—. “Grundlagen der Mathematik.” Vorlesungen. Winter-Semester 1921-
22. Lecture notes by Paul Bernays. Bibliothek, Mathematisches
Institut, Universität Göttingen (1921/22).
—. Gesammelte Abhandlungen. Berlin: Springer. 3 vols. (vol 1: 1932, vol
2: 1933, vol. 3: 1935) (Reedition: 1965. New York: Chelsea).
—. Hilbert’s Invariant Theory Papers. Brookline, Mass.: Math Sci Press,
1978 (translated by M. Ackerman; comments by R. Hermann).
—. Theory of Algebraic Invariants. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1994.
—. The Theory of Algebraic Number Fields. Berlin: Springer, 1998.
—. Lectures on the Foundations of Geometry, 1891-1902. (M. Hallet and
U. Majer, eds.). Berlin: Springer, 2004.
—. Lectures on the Foundations of Physics, 1915-1927. (T. Sauer and U.
Majer, eds.). Berlin: Springer, 2009.
—. Lectures on the Foundations of Arithmetic and Logic, 1917-1933. (W.
Ewald and W. Sieg, eds.). Berlin: Springer (2013).
Hilbert, D. and Ackermann, W. Grundzüge der theoretischen Logik.
Berlin: Springer, 1928. (Reedition: 1938).
262 Reference List
Hille, E. “Gelfond’s Solution of Hilbert’s Seventh Problem.” The

American Mathematical Monthly, 49, no. 10 (1942), 654-661.
Huntington, E. V. “A complete set of postulates for the theory of absolute
continuous magnitude.” Transactions of the American Mathematical
Society, 3(1902): 264-279.
—. “Simplified definition of a group.” Bulletin of the American
Mathematical Society, 8 (1901-02): 296-300.
Ilyashenko, Y. “Centennial History of Hilbert’s 16th Problem,” Bulletin of
the American Mathematical Society, vol. 39, no. 3(2002): 301-354.
Kimberling, C. H. “Emmy Noether.” The American Mathematical
Monthly, 79, no. 2 (1972):136-149.
Klein, F. Vergleichende Betrachtungen über neuere geometrische
Forschungen. Erlangen: Verlag von Andreas Deichert, 1872.
—. Lectures on Mathematics. AMS Chelsea publishing, 1894.
https://archive.org/stream/134256628#page/n5/mode/2up.
—. Vorlesungen Über die Entwicklung der Mathematik im 19.
Jahrhundert. Berlin: Verlag von Julius Springer, 1926.
Knoebel, A., Lodder, J., Laubenbacher, R., and Pengelley, D. Patterns
in Prime Numbers: The Quadratic Reciprocity Law. In
Mathematical Masterpieces. Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics.
New York: Springer, 2007.
Kummer, E. Collected works, vol. 1 (ed. A. Weil) Berlin: Springer, 1975.
Lemmermeyer, F. Reciprocity Laws: From Euler to Eisenstein. Berlin:
Springer, 2000.
Lewis, D. W. “David Hilbert and the Theory of Algebraic Invariants.”
Irish Math. Soc. Bull., 33(1994): 42-54.
Mancosu, P. From Brouwer to Hilbert. The Debate on the Foundations of
Mathematics in the 1920s. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
—. “Between Russell and Hilbert: Behmann on the Foundations of
Mathematics.” The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic 5, no. 3(1999): 303-330.
Mashaal, M. Bourbaki: A Secret Society of Mathematicians. Providence,
RI: The American Mathematical Society, 2006.
Moore, E. H. “On the projective axioms of Geometry”. Transactions of the
American Mathematical Society, vol 3, no. 1 (1902):142-158.
Parshall, K. H. “Toward a history of nineteenth-century invariant theory.”
In Rowe, D. E., McCleary, J. (eds.), The History of Modern
Mathematics, vol. I, 157–206. Boston: Academic Press, 1989.
—. “How We Got Where We Are. An International Overview of
Mathematics in National Contexts (1875-1900).” Notices of the AMS,
43, no. 3(1996): 287-296.
Parshall, K. H. and Rowe, D. E. The emergence of the American

Mathematical Research Community 1876-1900. J. J. Sylvester, Felix
Klein and E. H. Moore. American Mathematical Society and London
Mathematical Society. History of Mathematics, volume 8, 1994
(reprinted 1997).
Pasch, M. Vorlesungen über Neuere Geometrie. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner,
1882 (second edition, with additions: 1912).
Peckhaus, V. Hilbertsprogramm und Kritische Philosophie. Das Göttinger
Modell interdisziplinärer Zusammenarbeit zwischen Mathematik und
Philosophie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990.
—. “Logic in Transition: The Logical Calculi of Hilbert (1905) and
Zermelo (1908).” In Prawitz, D. and Westertähl, D. (eds.). Logic and
Philosophy of Science in Uppsala. Synthese Lybrary 236. Dordrecht:
Kluwer, 1994.
Poncelet, J. V. “Considérations philosophiques et techniques sur le
principe de continuité dans les lois géométriques.” In J. V. Poncelet,
Applications d’analyse et de géométrie qui ont servi de principal
fondement au Traité des propriétés projectives des figures, t. 2, 296-
364. Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1864.
Reid, C. Hilbert. New York: Springer, 1970 (Reedition: 1996).
Reid, L. W. The Elements of the Theory of Algebraic Numbers. New York:
MacMillan, 1910. (With an introduction by David Hilbert).
Roquette, P. David Hilbert in Königsberg. Vortrag am 30.9.2002 an der
Mathematischen Fakultat in Kaliningrad, 2002.
Roselló, J. From Foundations to Philosophy of Mathematics. An
Historical Account of their Development in XX Century and Beyond.
Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012.
Rowe, D. E. “‫ލ‬Jewish Mathematics‫ ތ‬at Gottingen in the Era of Felix
Klein.” Isis, 77, no. 3(1986): 422-449.
—. “Klein, Hilbert, and the Gottingen Mathematical Tradition.” Osiris,
2nd Series, vol. 5, Science in Germany: The Intersection of
Institutional and Intellectual Issues (1989): 186-213.
—. “From Königsberg to Göttingen. A sketch of Hilbert’s early career.”
The Mathematical Intelligencer, 25, no. 2(2003): 44-50.
—. “Making Mathematics in an Oral Culture: Göttingen in the Era of
Klein and Hilbert.” Science in Context 17, 1/2(2004): 85–129.
—. A Richer Picture of Mathematics. Springer, 2018. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-
319-67819-1.
Rüdenberg, L. and Zassenhaus, H. (eds.). Hermann Minkowski Briefe an
David Hilbert. Berlin: Springer, 1973.
264 Reference List
Scanlan, M. “Who were the American Postulate Theorists? The Journal of

Symbolic Logic, 56, no. 3(1991): 981-1002.
Schappacher, N. “David Hilbert, Report on Algebraic Number Fields
(‘Zahlbericht’) (1897). In Grattan-Guinness (ed.). Landmark Writings
in Western Mathematics 1640-1940. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005.
Schulmann, R. et al., (eds.). The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein
(CPAE), vol. 8, The Berlin Years: Correspondence, 1914-1918.
Princeton: University Press, 1998.
Seelig, C. Albert Einstein: A documentary biography. London: Staples
Press,1956.
Segal, S. L. “Mathematics and German politics: The national socialist
experience.” Historia Mathematica, 13, no. 2(1986): 118-135.
Sieg, W. Hilbert’s Programs and Beyond. Oxford: University Press, 2013.
Siegmund Schultze, R. Mathematicians Fleeing from Nazi Germany:
Individual Fates and Global Impact. Princeton, N.J./Oxford: Princeton
University Press, 2009.
Staudt, K. G. Ch. von. Geometrie der Lage. Nürnberg: Bauer und Raspe,
1847.
Toepell, M. “The origin and further development of Hilbert Grundlagen
der Geometrie.” Le Matematiche, LV, Supplemento no. 1(2000): 207-
226.
Veblen, O. “A system of axioms for geometry.” Transactions of the
American Mathematical Society (July 1904): 342-384.
Waerden, B. L. van der. “The school of Hilbert and Emmy Noether.” Bull.
London Math. Soc, 15 (1983): 1-7.
—. “Nachruf auf Emmy Noether.” Mathematische Annalen 111(1935): 1-
7. English translation in Dick, 1981,100-111.
Weil, A. The Apprenticeship of a Mathematician. Basel: Birkhäuser
(1992).
Weyl, H. “Emmy Noether.” Scripta mathematica 3, no. 3(1935): 201-220.
English translation in Dick, 1981, 112-152.
—. The classical groups. Their invariants and representations. Princeton
(NJ): Princeton University Press (1939).
—. “David Hilbert and his mathematical work.” Bull. Amer. Math. Soc.,
50, no. 9(1944): 612-654.
Wiener, N. Ex-prodigy: My Childhood and Youth. New York:
Simon&Schuster, 1953.
Wolfson, P. R. “George Boole and the origins of invariant theory.”
Historia Mathematica 35(2008): 37-46.
Zermelo, E. “Untersuchungen über die Grundlagen der Mengenlehre, I.”

Mathematische Annalen 65 (1908): 261-81. English translation in van
Heijenoort, 1967, 200-215.
AUTHOR INDEX
A Bolyai, János 73, 75, 86, 140, 144,

Abel, Niels Henrik 68 146, 240
Abraham, Max 139 Bolza, Oskar 89-91, 118
Ackermann, Wilhelm 96, 163, 166- Bolzano, Bernard 124
68, 200, 202, 240 Boole, George 17
Alexander, James 234 Borel, Armand 230, 234, 236
Alexandroff, Pavel 205, 208-9, 212, Borel, Émile 225
217 Born, Max 4, 129-30, 136-37, 139,
Appell, Paul 12 141, 151-52, 183-84, 186-90,
Archimedes 73, 75-7, 81-2, 85-6 217
Arnol’d, Vladimir 250 Brianchon, Charles Jules 29
Aronhold, Siegfried 17 Bricard, Raoul 241
Artin, Emil 50-2, 69, 109, 203, 208, Brouwer, Luitzen Egbertus Jan 171-
210-12, 217, 229, 246, 253 80, 194, 199, 201
Atiyah, Michael 236 Bruhat, Francois 230
Burnside, William 212
B Busemann, Herbert 217, 242
Baldus, Richard 175, 177
Bär, Richard 156-57, C
Becker, Oskar 175, 177 Cantor, Georg 2, 99-100, 107-08,
Behmann, Heinrich 138, 160 111, 123-25, 127, 172, 174, 239
Beltrami, Eugenio 75 Carathéodory, Constantin 129, 146,
Bernays, Paul 96, 157, 159-63, 166, 152, 165, 178-79, 244
175-77, 188, 193, 208, 216-17, Carnap, Rudolf 96, 179, 200-01
221 Carnot, Lazare 27
Bernstein, Sergei 112, 118, 219, 255 Cartan, Henri 226-27
Bieberbach, Ludwig 177-78, 223, Cartier, Pierre 230, 237
254 Cauchy, Agustin-Louis 30, 124, 251
Birkhoff, David 91, 225 Cayley, Arthur 17, 19, 21, 55, 86,
Blackett, Patrick 187 88, 95, 210, 212
Blaschke, Wilhelm 242 Chasles, Michel 29, 252
Blumenthal, Otto 1, 36, 66, 71, 80, Chern, Shiing-Shen 236
118, 129, 142, 178-79, 205, 249 Chevalley, Claude 52, 225-27, 236,
Böhm, Friedrich 152 238
Bohr, Niels 151, 178, 180, 183, 186- Chew, Geoffrey 234
87 Clebsch, Alfred 10, 17, 21, 53-6,
Bolibruch, Andrei 257 58-9, 61, 89
Boltzmann, Ludwig 140 Cohen, Paul 239
268 Author Index
Compton, Karl Taylor 187 Enriques, Federigo 80

Connes, Alain 231 Euclid 30, 72-5, 80-1, 84, 98
Courant, Richard 5, 118, 129, 141, Euler, Leonard 42-3, 142, 255
146, 178, 183, 185-89, 207, 217, Ewald, Paul 151
219, 223, 256
Crelle, August Leopold 61 F
Curie, Marie 149 Faltings, Gerd 237
Curie, Paul 149 Feferman, Solomon 240
Fenchel, Werner 217
D Fermat, Pierre de 29, 41-2, 46, 142,
Davis, Martin 246-47 144, 237, 246-47
Debye, Peter 144, 151-52, 157, 165, Finsler, Paul 175, 177
182-83, 187, 207 Fischer, Emil 152
Dedekind, Richard 2, 9, 40-1, 47, Fischer, Ernst 121, 206
49, 51, 98-9, 124-25, 131, 210- Fourier, Joseph 53, 116, 117
12 Fraenkel, Abraham 4, 96, 129, 175,
Dehn, Max 222, 241 177
Deligne, Pierre 232, 237 Franck, James 183, 186-87, 217
Delsarte, Jean 226-27 Fréchet, Maurice 119, 121
Delzell, Charles 253 Fredholm, Erik Ivar 113-16, 119
Desargues, Girard 27, 33, 36, 242 Frege, Gottlob 77, 100, 124-25, 163,
Descartes, René 29 171
Deuring, Max 212, 249 Freudenthal, Hans 222
Dickson, Leonard E. 91, 94, 210, Fricke, Robert 58, 129
212 Frobenius, Ferdinand Georg 27,
Dieudonné, Jean 120, 226-28, 236, 210, 212
238 Fuchs, Lazarus 9, 15, 65, 110, 117
Diophantus 41 Fueter, Rudolf 70, 118
Dirac, Paul 187-191, 234, 244 Furtwängler, Philipp 52, 69, 200,
Dirichlet, Peter Gustav Lejeune 40, 246
47, 49, 53, 97-8, 102, 117, 141,
147, 247 G
Dixmier, Jacques 230 Galois, Evarist 1, 13, 50
Dresden, Arnold 177 Gauss, Carl Friedrich 1, 16-7, 40-4,
Dyck, Walther von 178 47, 49-50, 53, 60-1, 72, 175,
Dyson, Freeman 234 247, 254
Gelfond, Alexander 244-45
E Gell-mann, Murray 234
Écalle, Jean 253 Gentzen, Gerhard 217, 240
Ehrenfest, Paul 183 Gergonne, Joseph 80
Ehrlich, Paul 152 Giraud, Georges 255-56
Eilenberg, Samuel 230-31 Gleason, Andrew 243
Einstein, Albert 139-42, 149, 152- Glivenko, Valerii 177
57, 178-79, 189, 233-35 Gödel, Kurt 2, 96, 127, 169, 180,
Eisenstein, Ferdinand Gotthold 40, 200-03, 215-16, 234-35, 239-40,
44, 46-7 247
Godement, Roger 230 Hurwitz, Adolf 10-2, 27-8, 49, 58,

Gomperz, Heinrich 200 67, 103, 147, 159, 166
Gordan, Paul 12, 15-17, 20-1, 56, Husserl, Edmund 144
146, 206
Goursat, Édouard 226 I
Grelling, Kurt 118, 177 Ilyashenko, Yulij 253
Grossmann, Marcel 140
Grothendieck, Alexandre 230-32, J
236-38 Jacobi, Carl 8, 44, 47, 49
Gudkov, Dimitrii 253 John, Fritz 217
Jordan, Camille 56
H Jordan, Pascual 183, 187-90
Haag, Rudolf 244
Haar, Alfréd 118, 152 K
Hahn, Hans 200, 215 Kaluza, Theodor 223
Hamel, Georg 118, 242, 244 Kármán, Theodor von 129, 151, 178
Hamkins, Joel 240 Kastler, Daniel 244
Hardy, Godfrey Harold 143, 186, Kirchoff, Gustav 9
217 Klein, Felix 3, 10, 12, 15, 20, 27,
Harnack, Axel 252 34, 40, 53-66, 72, 80, 86, 88-90,
Hasse, Helmut 49-50, 52, 69, 212, 95, 110, 117-18, 130, 140, 144-
222-23, 246-49 45, 152-53, 176, 185, 189, 205-
Hausdorff, Felix 119, 239 07, 217, 223, 257
Hecke, Erich 41, 49, 118, 129, 151, Koebe, Paul 129, 257
179, 211, 222, 249 Kolmogorov, Andrey 177, 244, 250
Heckmann, Gustav 184 König. Julius 239
Heesch, Heinrich 254 Koszul, Jean-Louis 230
Heisenberg, Werner 4, 183, 186-89 Kramers, Hans 183
Hellinger, Ernst 118, 120, 130, 137, Kronecker, Leopold 15-6, 21, 40-1,
141 47, 49-51, 53-4, 68-70, 89, 98,
Helmholtz, Hermann von 15, 77 109, 111, 174-75, 248-49
Hensel, Kurt 49, 96 Kummer, Ernst 40, 44, 46-7, 50-1,
Herbrand, Jacques 225 53, 67
Herglotz, Gustav 129, 139, 188,
217, 223 L
Hermite, Charles 12, 20, 39, 109 Lagrange, Joseph Louis 16, 43, 142-
Hertz, Heinrich 37, 79, 149 43, 255
Hertz, Paul 151, 217, 221 Landau, Edmund 65, 144-46, 152,
Hesse, Otto 9 185-86, 207, 217-18, 222-23
Heyting, Arendt 177, 179-80 Landé, Alfred 183
Hirzebruch, Friedrich 236 Lang, Serge 230
Hölder, Otto 178 Lasker, Emanuel 211
Holmgren, Erik 113 Laue, Max von 139, 187
Houtermans, Fritz 187 Lee, Tsung-Dao 234
Huntington, Edward 93-6 Legendre, Adrien-Marie 43-5
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 125
270 Author Index
Lenard, Philipp 182 Neumann, Franz 8

Leray, Jean 225 Neumann, John von 4, 120-21, 129,
Lewy, Hans 217, 221, 255 177, 179, 188, 190-91, 215, 234,
Lie, Sophus 11, 55-6, 77, 89, 111, 240, 244
207, 217, 230, 242 Nevanlinna, Rolf 223
Lindemann, Ferdinand von 10-1, 39, Newton, Isaac 125
109 Noether, Emmy 4, 22, 51-2, 153,
Littlewood, John Edensor 143 182, 186, 203, 205-13, 217,
Lobachevski, Nikolai 73, 75-7, 86 219-23, 229, 237
Loewy, Alfred 96 Noether, Max 205
Lorentz, Hendrik 139, 151 Nordheim, Lothar 184, 187-90
Low, Francis 234 Novikov, Petr Sergeevich 240
M O
Macaulay, Francis 211 Ocagne, Maurice d’ 109-10
Madelung, Erwin 151 Oppenheimer, Robert 187, 234, 236
Magnus, Wilhelm 217
Maier, Heinrich 146 P
Mandelbrojt, Szolem 227 Padoa, Alessandro 110
Maschke, Heinrich 89-91 Pais, Abraham 234
Matiyasevich, Yuri 246-47 Pasch, Moritz 30, 34, 36-7, 80, 95
Maxwell, James 149 Pauli, Wolfgang 183, 187, 234
Menger, Karl 200 Pauling, Linus 187
Mie, Gustav 152-54, 244 Peano, Giuseppe 95, 99, 110, 123,
Minkowski, Hermann 1, 4, 7, 10-2, 132-33, 240
21, 24, 27, 36, 39-41, 65, 67, Picard, Émile 12
103-04, 112, 117-18, 130, 139- Pieri, Mario 80, 95
43, 149, 205, 217, 223, 247-48 Planck, Max 4, 58, 123, 140-41,
Misch, Georg 144 149, 151-52
Misses, Richard von 218, 222 Playfair, John 75
Mittag-Leffler, Gösta 145 Plemelj, Josip 256
Monge, Gaspard 27 Plücker, Julius 11, 54
Montgomery, Deane 236, 243 Pogorelov, Aleksei 242
Moore, Eliakim Hastings 88-94 Pohl, Robert 183
Morette, Cécile 234 Poincaré, Henri 12, 56, 58, 77, 103,
Morrey, Charles 256 110, 116-17, 134-35, 138-39,
Mumford, David 238, 251 140, 144-46, 160, 171, 194, 199,
225, 257
N Poisson, Siméon 53
Nagata, Masayoshi 250 Pólya, Georg 159-60
Nambu, Yoichiro 234 Poncelet, Jean-Victor 27, 29-30, 73,
Nelson, Leonard 144, 146, 160, 182, 251
184 Possel, Renné de 226-27
Nernst, Walther 140, 151-52 Prandtl, Ludwig 65, 130, 152, 184
Neugebauer, Otto 217, 221 Putnam, Hilary 246
Neumann, Carl 61, 98, 116
R Simpson, Stephen 203

Reich, Max 183 Skolem, Thoralf 129, 177
Reid, Leigh Wilber 51 Smoluchowski, Marian von 151
Reinhardt, Karl 254 Sommer, Julius 51
Rellich, Franz 217 Sommerfeld, Arnold 129, 139, 151,
Reye, Theodor 35 178, 183-84
Richelot, Friedrich 9 Speiser, Andreas 118, 212
Riecke, Eduard 130 Stark, Johannes 182
Riemann, Bernhard 1, 50, 53, 60, Staudt, Karl von 30, 35
73, 75, 77, 97, 109, 111, 125, Steinitz, Ernst 209-12
154, 178, 237, 245, 257 Study, Eduard 12, 20, 251
Riesz, Frigyes 121 Sydler, Jean Pierre 241
Ritz, Walter 140 Sylvester, James Joseph 12, 17, 21,
Robb, Alfred 244 88
Robinson, Julia 246-47
Röntgen, Wilhelm 149, 152
Rosenhain, Johann G. 8 T
Runge, Carl 58, 65, 118, 130, 145- Takagi, Teiji 52, 69-70, 118, 246,
46, 152, 183, 188, 217, 223 249
Russell, Bertrand 123-25, 127, 131, Taniyama, Yutaka 237, 249
137-38, 160, 163-65, 171, 201 Tarski, Alfred 95-6
Tate, John 230
S Taussky-Todd, Olga 217
Saalschütz, Louis 8 Taylor, Richard 237
Samuel, Pierre 230 Teichmüller, Oswald 221, 223
Schafarevich, Igor 246 Thomson, Joseph John 149
Schauder, Juliusz 256 Toeplitz, Otto 129, 141
Scherk, Peter 217 Tonelli, Leonida 256
Schlick, Moritz 200-01 Tornier, Erhard 222-23
Schmidt, Arnold 217
Schmidt, Erhard 116, 118-19, 121, V
188, 206, 212 Vahlen, Theodor 223
Schneider, Theodor 244-45 Veblen, Oswald 77, 91, 93-6, 100,
Schottky, Friedrich 257 221, 233-34
Schreier, Otto 211-12, 253 Veronese, Giuseppe 73, 80, 86
Schrödinger, Erwin 188-90 Vitushkin, Anatoli 250
Schubert, Hermann 111, 251-52 Voigt, Woldemar 130
Schur, Friedrich 91-2
Schwartz, Laurent 230-31 W
Schwarz, Hermann 15, 89, 257 Waerden, Baertel Leender van der
Schwarzschild, Karl 65, 130, 205 21-2, 64, 203, 205, 209, 211-12,
Selberg, Atle 236 227-29
Serre, Jean-Pierre 230-32, 236 Waring, Edward 1, 142-43, 147
Shimura, Goro 70, 237, 249-50 Wassermann, August von 152
Siegel, Carl Ludwig 186, 223, 245 Wavre, Rolin 177
Simon, Hermann Theodor 130
272 Author Index
Weber, Heinrich 9-10, 40, 49-50, Y

60, 63, 68-70, 72, 89, 93-4, 210- Yang, Chen Ning 234
12, 248-49 Yoccoz, Jean-Cristophe 231
Weber, Werner 221, 223 Yukawa, Hideki 234
Wedderburn, Joseph 210, 212
Weierstrass, Karl 15-6, 53, 55, 89, Z
97-8, 125, 131, 176, 257 Zariski, Oscar 238, 251
Weil, André 50, 52, 225-27, 232, Zermelo, Ernst 296, 107, 123-24,
236-37, 249 126-27, 129, 131, 137, 146, 151,
Weyl, Hermann 4, 24, 49, 52, 117- 171, 239
18, 120, 129, 146, 173-77, 185, Zippin, Leo 243
194, 205-08, 217-18, 221-24, Zolotarev, Yegor 47
237
Whitehead, Alfred North 127, 137-
38, 160, 163-65
Whitney, Hassler 236
Wiechert, Emil 65, 72, 130, 139,
152
Wien, Wilhelm 152, 182
Wiener, Hermann 36, 72
Wiener, Norbert 65
Wightman, Arthur 244
Wiles, Andrew 237
Witt, Ernst 208, 212, 217
Wolff, Julius 175, 177

Hilbert, Gottingen and The Development of Modern Mathematics

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Hilbert, Gottingen and The Development of Modern Mathematics

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Hilbert, Göttingen and

This book first published 2019

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Copyright © 2019 by Joan Roselló

ISBN (10): 1-5275-2331-4

List of Illustrations ..................................................................................... ix

Chapter One ................................................................................................. 7

Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 15

Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 27

Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 39

Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 53

Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 63

Chapter Eight ............................................................................................. 79

Chapter Ten ............................................................................................... 97

Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 103

Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 113

Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 123

Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 131

Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 139

Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 149

Chapter Seventeen ................................................................................... 159

Chapter Eighteen ..................................................................................... 171

Chapter Nineteen ..................................................................................... 181

Chapter Twenty ....................................................................................... 193

Chapter Twenty-One ............................................................................... 205

Chapter Twenty-Two............................................................................... 215

Chapter Twenty-Three............................................................................. 225

Appendix ................................................................................................. 239

Reference List.......................................................................................... 259

Author Index............................................................................................ 267

Fig. 1-2 Albertine University of Königsberg.

Fig. 1-3 Hermann Minkowski, 1883.

Fig. 1-4 David Hilbert, 1886.

Fig. 2-1 The founders of the DMV in Bremen in 1890.

Fig. 3-1 Adolf Hurwitz as an Extraordinarius in Königsberg.

Fig. 3-2 Projection of a figure in a plane.

Fig. 3-3 Desargues’ theorem.

Fig. 5-1 Felix Klein as a professor at Leipzig.

Fig. 9-1 Eliakim Hasting Moore.

Fig. 11-1 David Hilbert, ca. 1900.

Fig. 13-1 Ernst Zermelo in the 1900s.

Fig 14-1. Logische Principien des mathematischen Denkens. Lecture notes

Fig. 15-1 Poincaré, Mittag-Leffler, Runge and Landau.

Source: Konrad Jacobs, Erlangen. Oberwolfach Photo Collection.

Fig. 16-1 David Hilbert, 1912.

Fig. 16-2 Albert Einstein, 1916.

Fig. 17-1 Paul Bernays, ca. 1920.

Fig. 18-1 Brouwer and Bohr at the International Mathematical Congress,

Fig. 19-1 The Mathematical Institute at Bunsenstrasse, 3-5.

Fig. 19-2 Richard Courant in a lecture, 1932.

Fig. 21-1 Emmy Noether with colleagues at Nikolausberg (near

Fig. 22-1 David Hilbert in a lecture, 1932.

Fig. 23-1 Bourbaki founding congress in Besse-en-Chandesse, July 1935.

Fig. 24-1 Kurt Gödel and Albert Einstein at Princeton, 1950.

Fig. 24-2 Alexandre Grothendieck lecturing at the Seminar of Algebraic

David Hilbert is undoubtedly one of the most outstanding mathematicians

unity” in one or more branches of mathematics, the most characteristic

around the world, wanted to go to complete their training or progress in

HILBERT’S EARLY CAREER

David Hilbert was born in Wehlau,1 in the neighbourhood of Königsberg

the study of languages, particularly the classical ones, predominated. What

‫ ؿ ؿ‬

‫ ؿ ؿ‬