Godel: A Life of Logic, The Mind, and Mathematics

Kurt Gö was an intellectual giant. His Incompleteness Theorem turned not only mathematics but also the whole world of science and philosophy on its head. Equally legendary were Gö's eccentricities, his close friendship with Albert Einstein, and his paranoid fear of germs that eventually led to his death from self-starvation. Now, in the first popular biography of this strange and brilliant thinker, John Casti and Werner DePauli bring the legend to life. After describing his childhood in the Moravian capital of Brno, the authors trace the arc of Gö's remarkable career, from the famed Vienna Circle, where philosophers and scientists debated notions of truth, to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he lived and worked until his death in 1978. In the process, they shed light on Gö's contributions to mathematics, philosophy, computer science, artificial intelligence -- even cosmology -- in an entertaining and accessible way.

John L. Casti, a member of the faculty of both the Santa Fe Institute and the Technical Unviersity of Vienna, has written numerous acclaimed popular scinece books, including Would-be Worlds, Five Golden Rules, and The Cambridge Quintet.

Werner DePauli is University Assistant and Oberrat at the Institute of Statistics and Computer Science of the University of Vienna. He is the author of several books in German about Godel.