David Hilbert spouse Käthe Hilbert
Personal life
In 1892, Hilbert married Käthe Jerosch (1864–1945), who was the daughter of a Königsberg merchant, "an outspoken young lady with an independence of mind that matched [Hilbert's]." While at Königsberg they had their one child, Franz Hilbert (1893–1969).
Franz suffered throughout his life from an undiagnosed mental illness. His inferior intellect was a terrible disappointment to his father and this misfortune was a matter of distress to the mathematicians and students at Göttingen.Hilbert considered the mathematician Hermann Minkowski to be his "best and truest friend".Hilbert was baptized and raised a Calvinist in the Prussian Evangelical Church. He later left the Church and became an agnostic. He also argued that mathematical truth was independent of the existence of God or other a priori assumptions. When Galileo Galilei was criticized for failing to stand up for his convictions on the Heliocentric theory, Hilbert objected: "But [Galileo] was not an idiot. Only an idiot could believe that scientific truth needs martyrdom; that may be necessary in religion, but scientific results prove themselves in due time."
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