Talk:Kurt Gödel

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 Definition:  (1906-1978) Austrian born American mathematician, most famous for proving that in any logical system rich enough to describe naturals, there are always statements that are true but impossible to prove within the system. [d] [e]
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Most important?

The most important? Then what counts as "modern times"? Frege and Russell/Whitehead each have as strong a claim as Goedel. --Larry Sanger 10:03, 4 June 2008 (CDT)

For 'modern times', I was sort of meaning the 20th century.
As to the magnitude, I was echoing a quote I saw in the Stanford EP: "established, beyond comparison, as the most important logician of our times," Solomon Feferman (Feferman 1986). That article also describes Godel as having "founded the modern, metamathematical era in mathematical logic."
I would say he's definitely more important that Russell/Whitehead, because he proved that their whole system (and the whole Hilbert program) was to some degree built on quicksand. FWIWFor what it's worth, I would think Turing was more important (in terms of mathematical logic - to me, all computability/computing stuff is a subset of mathematical logic) than Russell/Whitehead, no? I mean, not just in everyday implications (computers), but also the whole computable numbers thing, the halting problem, yadda-yadda.
Frege I don't know so much about, maybe he's as important at Godel. J. Noel Chiappa 10:31, 4 June 2008 (CDT)
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