David Gilbert is a well-known mathematician and teacher of the highest class, who did not know fatigue, persevering in his intentions, inspiring and magnanimous, one of the great in his time.
David was born in the town of Velau, locatednear Koenigsberg (Prussia). Born on January 23, 1862, he was the first child of a married couple - Otto and Maria. Gilbert was not a child prodigy; alternating with the goal of fully exploring every area of mathematics, he solved the problems that interested him. With the completion of the creative impulse, David studied his field of activity with his students. And left in absolute order, teaching them the appropriate course and publishing a good textbook to followers.
Давид Гильберт, биография которого интересна the modern generation, was caring and polite with the students, in whom he felt potential. If the spark faded, then the scientist politely recommended them to try themselves in a different kind of activity. Some of the students of Hilbert followed the advice of the teacher and became engineers, physicists and even writers. The professor did not understand slackers and considered them to be inferior people. Being a very respected man of science, David had his own characteristics. In warm weather, he came to lectures in a shirt with a short sleeve and an open collar, which was not at all like a professor, or he carried flower bouquets to numerous passions. I could ride a bicycle ahead of me, like a gift, to carry a container of fertilizers.
His ability to exact sciences, David Gilbert,a brief biography of which is described in our article, I felt even in Konigsberg, where the profession of mathematics was little respected. Therefore, having chosen the quiet Göttingen, the gathering place of German mathematicians, Hilbert moved there in 1895 and worked successfully until 1933, the moment Adolph Hitler came to power.
Hilbert read his lectures slowly, without unnecessaryjewelry, with frequent repetitions so that everyone understands it. David also always repeated the previous material. Hilbert's lectures were always collected by a large number of people: several hundred people could crowd into the hall, which were even located on window sills.
David began research on algebra, more precisely, on transformations in number theory. A report on this topic became the basis of his textbook.
Lucky in friendship, David was unlucky in the family.They got along well with his wife Kate, but their only son was born moronic. Therefore, Hilbert found an outlet in communication with numerous students - representatives of European and American countries. The mathematician often organized hiking tours and arranged joint tea drinking, during which reasoning on mathematical topics smoothly turned into ordinary conversations on various topics. Prim German professorship did not recognize this style of communication; it was David Gilbert's authority that made him the norm that mathematics students spread throughout the world.
Soon the algebraic interests of mathematicsmoved to geometry, namely, to infinite-dimensional spaces. The limit of the sequence of points, the gap between them, and the angle between the vectors determined the Hilbert space — something like Euclidean.
In the years 1898-1899, David Gilbert published a bookabout the foundations of geometry, which immediately became a bestseller. In it, he gave a complete system of axioms of Euclidean geometry, systematized them into groups, trying to determine the limiting values of each of them.
Such luck led Hilbert to believe thatEach mathematical area can apply a clear system of irreplaceable axioms and definitions. As a key example, the mathematician chose the general theory of sets, and in it, the well-known continuum – Cantor's conjecture. David Hilbert was able to prove the unprovability of this hypothesis. However, in 1931, the young Austrian Kurt Gödel proved that postulates like a continuum hypothesis, considered by Gilbert to be one of the mandatory axioms of set theory, can be found in any system of axioms. This statement indicates that the development of science does not stand still and will never cease, although each time it is necessary to invent new axioms and definitions - something that the human brain is fully adapted to. Gilbert knew this from his own experience, so he sincerely rejoiced at the amazing discovery of Gödel.
At the age of 38 at the Mathematical Congressin Paris, which brought together the entire color of the science of that time, Hilbert made a presentation on "Mathematical Problems", on which he proposed 23 important topics as a subject for discussion. Hilbert considered the key tasks of mathematics of the time to be actively developing areas of science (set theory, algebraic geometry, functional analysis, mathematical logic, number theory), in each of which he singled out the most important problems that by the end of the 20th century were either solved or unsolvability.
Однажды молодые ученики задали Гильберту вопрос о what task, in his opinion, is most important for mathematics, to which the aging scientist received the answer: “To catch a fly on the far side of the moon!” According to Gilbert, such a task was not of particular interest, but what prospects could be opened for its solution ! How much it would entail important discoveries and inventions of powerful methods!
The correctness of Hilbert's words was confirmed by life:It is worth remembering that the invention of computers happened to instantly calculate the hydrogen bomb. Discoveries such as the landing of the first man on the moon, the weather forecast on the entire planet, the launch of an artificial satellite of the Earth have become a kind of by-product of the solution. Unfortunately, Hilbert was not able to witness such significant events.
В последние годы жизни профессор бессильно следил for the collapse of the school of mathematics in Göttingen, which took place under the rule of the Nazis. David Hilbert, a mathematician who made an enormous contribution to science, died on February 14, 1943 from the effects of a broken arm. The cause of death was the physical immobility of mathematics.
