Kurt Gödel headshot

Kurt Gödel

Past Faculty
School of Mathematics

Affiliation

Mathematics

The foremost mathematical logician of the twentieth century, Kurt Gödel was associated with the Institute for Advanced Study from his first visit in the academic year 1933–34, until his death in 1978. He was Professor in the School of Mathematics from 1953 until 1976, when he became Professor Emeritus. Among Gödel’s most famous results are his Incompleteness Theorems, which show that in any consistent axiomatic mathematical system there are propositions that cannot be proved or disproved within the system and that the consistency of the axioms themselves cannot be proved. Additionally, Gödel published proofs of the relative consistency of the axiom of choice and the generalized continuum hypothesis (1938, 1940), which strongly influenced the (later) discovery that a computer can never be programmed to answer all mathematical questions.

Dates at IAS

Emeritus
School of Mathematics
Faculty
School of Mathematics
Member
School of Mathematics
Member
School of Mathematics
Fall
Member
School of Mathematics
Fall
Member
School of Mathematics

Degrees

University of Vienna
Ph.D.
1930

Honors

Am Philos Soc
Assoc for Symbolic Logic
Corr Member, Inst de France
For Member Royal Soc of Britain
London Math Soc
NAS
Natl Medal of Sci 1974 Memberships: AMS
1972
Rockefeller Univ
1967
Amherst Coll
1952
HonDSc: Harvard Univ
1951
HonDLitt Yale Univ
1951
Einstein Award
1951
AMS Gibbs Lect