Hilbert,+David

=David Hilbert= ==

=Biography= David Hilbert was born in Königsberg, Prussia (Now Kalingrad, Russia) on January 23, 1862. Hilbert grew up in a protestant middle class family, and attended the University of Königsberg after high school. After graduating from college, Hilbert accepted a teaching position at Königsberg in the mathematics department. Hilbert stayed there until 1895, when he was offered a teaching job at the University of Göttingen, which he accepted. Hilbert taught at Göttingen, which is in Göttingen, Germany, for the rest of his career. In 1899, Hilbert published a book, titled The Foundation of Geometry. Hilbert's book explained principles and laws that he discovered. The principles and laws covered the flaws in geometry discovered by Euclid. Because of his success with discovering the flaws in geometry, Hilbert decided that he wanted to solve the flaws in all division of mathematics. He soon realized that he could not do that by himself, so he went to the International Congress of Mathematics in Paris and asked all mathematicians in the world to help him achieve his goal. Hilbert presented 23 problems and asked for all mathematicians in the 20th Century to try to solve them. Some of the problems Hilbert presented in 1900 remained unsolved today. Hilbert continued teaching and studying mathematics until 1930. Throughout his career, Hilbert received several awards. In 1905, he received an award from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 1930, he became an honorary citizen of the city of Königsberg. There is even a crater named after Hilbert, called Crater Hilbert. The final line of Hilbert’s acceptance speech for becoming an honorary citizen of Königsberg was, “We must know, we shall know”. This quote sums up Hilbert’s life as a mathematician. David Hilbert died in Göttingen, Germany, on February 14, 1946, at the age of 81.

=Contributions to the Mathematical World= David Hilbert made many mathematical achievements throughout his 44-year career. His first achievement was in 1888. Hilbert was working on the invariant theory and he discovered the Basis Theorem. In 1893, while Hilbert was studying algebraic number theory, he wrote a report called Zahlbericht. The German Mathematical Society asked for Hilbert's report in 1890, so they could study it. Hilbert spent the next several years studying geometry discovered by Euclid. Throughout this time, Hilbert discovered many principles and laws that solved flaws from Euclid's geometry, which he put into a book. The biggest contribution Hilbert made to the mathematical world was the discovery of Hilbert's Problems. Hilbert's Problems were 23 problems that Hilbert asked mathematicians of the 20th Century to solve. The problems involved the continuum hypothesis, the well ordering of the reals, Goldbach's conjecture, the transcendence of powers of algebraic numbers, the Reimann Hypothesis, and the extension of Dirichlet's principle. Some mathematicians of the 20th Century have spent their whole entire careers trying to solve these problems. Hilbert inspired a whole generation of mathematicians to try to solve mysteries of the mathematical world. Many of Hilbert's problems have been solved, or partially solved, but some problems have not yet been solved. Other contributions Hilbert made includes inventing a space-filling curve called the Hilbert Curve, and proving Waring's Theorem correct. Hilbert also was a professor to other famous mathematicians that made their own contributions to the mathematical world. Some of his students were Hermann Weyl, Lasker, and Zermelo.

=Sources=

David, Joyce. Mathematical Problems. March, 1997 February 25, 2008 [|http://aleph0.clarcku.edu/~djoyce/hilbert/problems.htm.]

Falbo, Clem. David Hilbert. June, 2007 Sonoma State University. February 26, 2008 http://www.sonoma.edu/math/faculty/falbo/hilbert.html.

Fischer, Emil, and Hans Freudenthal. American Council of LEarned Societies Volume 5 & 6. New York: Charles Scribners Sons,

O'Connor, JJ. David Hilbert. 2007 Mactutor. February 21, 2008 http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/biography/Hilbert.html.

Weisstein, Eric. Hilbert, David. 2007 Wolfram Research. February 26, 2008 http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Hilbert.html.