David Hilbert (January 23, 1862, Wehlau, East Prussia – February 14, 1943, Göttingen, Germany) was a German mathematician, recognized as one of the most influential mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He established his reputation as a great mathematician and scientist by inventing or developing a broad range of ideas, such as invariant theory, the axiomization of geometry, and the notion of Hilbert space, one of the foundations of functional analysis. Hilbert and his students supplied significant portions of the mathematic infrastructure required for quantum mechanics and general relativity. He is one of the founders of proof theory, mathematical logic and the distinction between mathematics and metamathematics. He adopted and warmly defended Cantor's set theory and transfinite numbers. A famous example of his world leadership in mathematics is his 1900 presentation of a set of problems that set the course for much of the mathematical research of the 20th century.

Life

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Hilbert was born in Wehlau, near Königsberg, East Prussia (now Znamensk, near Kaliningrad, Russia). He graduated from the lyceum of his native city and registered at the University of Königsberg. He obtained his doctorate in 1885, with a dissertation, written under Ferdinand von Lindemann, titled Über invariante Eigenschaften specieller binärer Formen, insbesondere der Kugelfunctionen ("On the invariant properties of special binary forms, in particular the circular functions"). Hermann Minkowski was also a doctoral candidate at the same university and time, and he and Hilbert became close friends, the two exercising a reciprocal influence over each other at various times in their scientific careers.

Hilbert remained at the University of Königsberg as a professor from 1886 to 1895, when, as a result of intervention on his behalf by Felix Klein he obtained the position of Chairman of Mathematics at the University of Göttingen, at that time the best research center for mathematics in the world and where he remained for the rest of his life.

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