Product Description
Includes: Index and Suggestions for Further Reading. ... Read more

Product Description
If the life of any 20th century mathematician can be said to be a history of mathematics in his time, it is that of David Hilbert. To the enchanted young mathematicians and physicists who flocked to study with him in Goettingen before and between the World Wars, he seemed mathematics personified, the very air around him"scientifically electric." His remarkably prescient proposal in 1900 of twenty-three problems for the coming century set the course of much subsequent mathematics and remains a feat that no scientist in any field has been able to duplicate. When he died, Nature remarked that there was scarcely a mathematician in the world whose work did not derive from that of Hilbert.

Constance Reid's classic biography is a moving, nontechnical account of the passionate scientific life of this man-from the early days in Koenigsberg, when his revolutionary work was dismissed as "theology," to the golden years in Goettingen before Hitler came to power and within a few months destroyed the entire Hilbert school. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

a masterpiece biography that brings david hilbert and göttingen university to life
i almost cried when i got up to the death of minkowski, hilbert's closest friend and a great mathematician in his own right. such is the completely engaging power of constance reid's biography of hilbert. reid did an amazing job integrating the details of professor hilbert's life with the german zeitgeist, all the while providing some exposition of the mathematics for a general audience.

as a student and teacher of mathematics, i went into this book expecting to learn more about one of my heroes, the legendary david hilbert, perhaps best known to most for the famous twenty-three hilbert problems. hilbert did research in an impressive number of areas within mathematics, as well as branched out to physics and the philosophy of mathematics. hilbert's breadth and depth is what gave him the right to influence the course of twentieth century mathematics through the hilbert problems. suffice it to say, hilbert is very important in the mathematical community and i was more than a bit wide-eyed even before reading page one of reid's biography. after turning the last page, i feel like i understand more of the man actually standing on the well-deserved pedestal. my respect for hilbert has only grown knowing of his human flaws and what he has accomplished in spite of them.

it should be made explicit that this book is not just for math nerds. any intelligent reader with any interest in mathematics should be able to enjoy and benefit from reading reid's biography. perhaps you've heard of hilbert or the hilbert problems from some newspaper article somewhere and you wondered how mathematicians really lived. if so, that one spark of interest will be rewarded by reid's thorough biography.

of particular interest to me was the other side of the professorial life: teaching. research is the most important part of a mathematician's life, but i'm glad that reid even goes into details on hilbert's teaching style. apparently, hilbert didn't sufficiently prepare for lectures and would often get confused while teaching, needing the help of his assistants to get out of trouble. these mishaps were because of hilbert's strong desire to offer the students the most important points of the lessons, and the details would sometimes suffer because of this emphasis. hilbert would also repeat things as much as five times on purpose in order to get students to remember because he didn't have confidence in their abilities. half of his lecture time would also be spent reviewing the material from the previous lecture, again in order to really ingrain the material in the students' minds. i found these pedagogical details quite fascinating.

outside of hilbert's life, reid does a fantastic job transporting the reader to germany. the germans have a rich history and complex culture, but many folks can only think of the "n" word when it comes to germany. it's a pet peeve of mine that a large number of people cannot distinguish between "nazi" and "german." at göttingen university, mathematicians of all backgrounds, and even from different countries, were able to come together and work on mathematics under the leadership of david hilbert. göttingen was the epicenter of mathematical thought and it was spiritually destroyed by the nazis in their misguided quest for racial purity. this human story of political madness turning its sword on the purist of realms, mathematics, should hopefully dispel some negative german stereotypes. it is hoped that the reader will appreciate the tragedy of german identity a little more afterward.

those looking for a similar style of biography meshed with some explanations of higher mathematics for a non-specialized audience should also check out benjamin yandell's "the honors class: hilbert's problems and their solvers." yandell covers the hilbert problems in more depth than they are in reid's book. finally, reid also wrote "courant," a biography of one of hilbert's students. "courant" is regarded as the sequel to "hilbert" and should be read to complete the story. all three of these books are excellent and will immeasurably enrich the curious reader.

For non-mathematicians by a non-mathematician author
Constance Reid is a non-mathematician author, so she is the best person who can explain the 'abstract' modern math to the curious non-mathematicians. By following the book on the Greatest mathematician in 20th AD, the readers can understand the major development of Modern Math evolved around Hilbert and all the world's top mathematicians gathered in Gottingen before WWII.
Most of us learn abstract math without knowing the background from which these abstract concepts were derived. In this book (chapter VI: Changes) I learn from Reid the simple yet revealing explanation of 'Ideals' being born out of conflict of 'Algebraic Number Field' with the 'Fundamental Law of Arithmetics', and Kummer's Ideal Number, Kronecker and Dedekind's complicated 'Ideal Primes', and finaly David Hilbert's great contribution in the 'Ideal Primes' theory.

David Hilbert
A excellent biography of the German mathematician David Hilbert.Particularly poignant is the loss of Minknowski and the decline of mathematics at Gottingen following the Nazi prosecutions.

David Hilbert, one of the greatest mathematicians ever
David Hilbert was arguably one of the greatest mathematicians
ever!. He contributed to several branches of mathematics,
including functional analysis, mathematical physics,
calculus of variations, and algebraic number theory.
(Everyone knows what a Hilbert space is right!)

At the turn of the 20th century, Hilbert enumerated
23 unsolved problems of mathematics that he considered worthy
of further investigation. To this day, very few of these, including
the 10th problem, on the finite solvability of Diophantine
equations, have been resolved! (thanks to
Yuri Matiyasevich, Martin Davis and Julia Robinson!).
Besides, Hilbert was also a character (read the section
when Norbert Weiner of cybernetics fame, came to give
a talk at Gottingen, and .... :-)).

Incidentally the author Constance Reid is the sister of
Julia Robinson (of Hilbert's 10th problem fame!),
hence there can no one better to write about
Hilbert!. Besides Constance Reid is a well known chronicler
of mathematicians lives (this one is a tour de force and
her best!).

No one can can call himself/herself a mathematician without
having Reid's book on his/her bookshelf. Strongly
recommended!

David Hilbert, one of the greatest mathematicians ever
David Hilbert was arguably one of the greatest mathematicians
ever!. He contributed to several branches of mathematics,
including functional analysis, mathematical physics,
calculus of variations, and algebraic number theory.
(Everyone knows what a Hilbert space is right!)

At the turn of the 20th century, Hilbert enumerated
23 unsolved problems of mathematics that he considered worthy
of further investigation. To this day, very few of these, including
the 10th problem, on the finite solvability of Diophantine
equations, have been resolved! (thanks to
Yuri Matiyasevich, Martin Davis and Julia Robinson!).
Besides, Hilbert was also a character (read the section
when Norbert Weiner of cybernetics fame, came to give
a talk at Gottingen, and .... :-)).

Incidentally the author Constance Reid is the sister of
Julia Robinson (of Hilbert's 10th problem fame!),
hence there can no one better to write about
Hilbert!. Besides Constance Reid is a well known chronicler
of mathematicians lives (this one is a tour de force and
her best!).

No one can can call himself/herself a mathematician without
having Reid's book on his/her bookshelf. Strongly
recommended! ... Read more