The Mathematician Who Discovered Math's Greatest Mystery

Chapters
0:00 Intro to Kurt Gödel
0:44 Gödel’s early life
1:34 The Vienna Circle
2:00 The Incompleteness Theorem
4:05 Mental health struggles
6:30 Escape to America
7:15 Life at the Institute for Advanced Study
8:48 Growing paranoia
9:20 Views on God and the afterlife
10:05 His final days
11:10 Sponsor: Brilliant

Newsthink is produced and presented by Cindy Pom

Thank you to our Patrons, including Igli Laci

Sources:
Einstein’s office courtesy of the Institute for Advanced Study and edited by Newsthink Ltd.
John von Neumann images courtesy of the Institute for Advanced Study and colorized by Newsthink Ltd.
Purkersdorf sanatorium image 1:
University of Vienna staircase: © Hubertl / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

[Newsthink]

*PRONUNCIATION: I believe I have anglicized the pronunciation, and I'm aware the 'correct' way is "geu-del." Will attempt it next time!*

[YanusDV]

A mathematician friend told me that a better layman explanation of the theorems is: "a complete and consistent axiomatic system does not exist..if its complete then its not consistent and if its consistent then its not complete"

[ConnoisseurOfExistence]

You forgot to mention, that Godel's incompleteness theorems were not less a surprise to him, than to anyone else. He, like others, was trying to complete Hilbert's project and make mathematics one beautiful complete system, where every statement is provable from a set of axioms. His discovery of the inherent incompleteness of mathematics came as a shock to himself, as much as for the rest of the world. Thinking about all consequences of it, likely contributed to his mental state.
It would be great to see a video from you about Georg Cantor.

[dougcane]

By saying that his "doctors didn't know what they were doing" - Kurt Godel demonstrated that he was even smarter than we thought.

[goedelite]

My understanding of Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem is not as the narrator states, "There are mathematical truths that cannot be proved in any mathematical system." Rather, it is that there are mathematical truths in any mathematical system that cannot be proved within that axiomatic system. A significant difference!

[PriitKallas]

When doctors treated ulcers in 1950s they really didn't know what they were doing. They thought it's a stress and lifestyle disease. Actually the most common cause of ulcers is infection of the stomach by bacteria called Helicobacter pylori (H pylori). Then one guy figured it out and was ridiculed by all the other doctors for years. My grandfather died because of that. There was knowledge of how to treat this condition, but mainstream doctors blocked it.

The same thing happened about 100 years earlier with the discovery that germs cause diseases. Interestingly that happened in the Vienna General Hospital (Ignaz Semmelweis)

[axlotl]

You have captured Gödel quite concisely. Thank you.

[tylerbakeman]

Gödel has some pretty dope contributions to math, outside of completeness theorem.
Gödel contributed towards Axiomatic Set Theory, which other authors in their field are equally impressive in my opinion.

Grothendieck, Russel, and Zermelo are among my favorites.
A lot of the abstract thinking comes from a broad pool of mathematicians… these guys are geniuses, even though we like to make fun of some of their work occasionally haha.

[AlesNajmann]

Gödel also developed the ideas of computability and recursive functions. It's equivalent to lambda calculus and/or turing machine. It's a bit unfortunate it wasn't mentioned. He was genius.

[douglaswilkinson]

I was a math major at UCLA and remember hearing talk of his death in the department in 1978.

[DrEnzyme]

Godel, Escher, Bach, is a good (if dense) read. It's probably the best explanation of incompleteness theorem I've come across.

[FritsKist]

How smart do I have to be to realize how stupid I am?

[tetsi]

@7:20 Gödel fled to the US via Soviet Union (Trans-Siberian Railway) and Japan. He arrived by ship in San Francisco in March 1940. Not in New York.

[ralphhenderson]

An uncle of a was victim of 50’s ulcer surgery. He struggled with eating for the remainder of his life because the surgeons removed most of his stomach.

[ChitChat]

I nerded out way too much when Godel made a cameo in Oppenheimer (2023).

[jbtechcon]

I winced every time she said "Girdle"

[bobross]

Most men at the pinnacle of brilliance are really nutty... Paul Erdos, Nikola Tesla, etc. etc.

[davidespinosa]

You should also talk about Godel's *completeness* theorem, and the difference between the two theorems. That will give people a much better sense of what mathematical logic about.

[johndarby]

I still didnt understand what godel did;

[projectcontractors]

The reason Eisenstein liked walking home with Godel was his stories of what his stripper wife would do, cause we all know how much Eisenstein loved thought experiments.