Hilbert by Constance Reid

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Synopsis

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 Gšttingen 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 Kšnigsberg, when his revolutionary work was dismissed as "theology," to the golden years in Gšttingen before Hitler came to power and within a few months destroyed the entire Hilbert school.

Constance Reid has been called "the foremost mathematical biographer of our time." Her many books include From Zero to Infinity, A Long Way from Euclid, The Search for E.T. Bell, and Neyman, from Life.

Freeman Dyson

[Hilbert] is woven out of three distinct themes. It presents a sensitive portrait of a great human being. It describes accurately and intelligibly on a nontechnical level the world of mathematical ideas in which Hilbert created his masterpieces. And it illuminates the background of German social history against which the drama of Hilbert's life played.... Beyond this, it is a poem in praise of mathematics.
— Science

Biography

Constance Reid has been called "the foremost mathematical biographer of our time." Her many books include From Zero to Infinity, A Long Way from Euclid, The Search for E.T. Bell, and Neyman, from Life.