page_title: David Hilbert
hierarchical_section_title: David Hilbert
caption_attribution_description: David Hilbert
context_page_description: David Hilbert was a German mathematician, logician, and philosopher of mathematics. He is widely considered to be one of the most influential and greatest mathematicians of the 19th and 20th centuries.
  Hilbert discovered and developed a range of fundamental ideas in many areas. He worked on invariant theory, the axiomization of geometry, and the notion of Hilbert space. This is one of the foundations of functional analysis. Hilbert and his students supplied much of the mathematics needed for quantum mechanics and general relativity. He was one of the founders of proof theory and mathematical logic. He was also one of the first people to make the distinction between mathematics and metamathematics, and warmly defended Georg Cantor's set theory and transfinite numbers.
context_section_description: David Hilbert (Königsberg, Prussia, 23 January 1862 –Göttingen, Germany, 14 February 1943) was a German mathematician, logician, and philosopher of mathematics. He is widely considered to be one of the most influential and greatest mathematicians of the 19th and 20th centuries.
  Hilbert discovered and developed a range of fundamental ideas in many areas. He worked on invariant theory, the axiomization of geometry, and the notion of Hilbert space. This is one of the foundations of functional analysis. Hilbert and his students supplied much of the mathematics needed for quantum mechanics and general relativity. He was one of the founders of proof theory and mathematical logic. He was also one of the first people to make the distinction between mathematics and metamathematics, and warmly defended Georg Cantor's set theory and transfinite numbers.
caption: David Hilbert. Picture taken in 1912.
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