Since now you know what the Infinite Hotel paradox is... But how many know about Hilbert himself...
David Hilbert was one of the greatest mathematicians. In fact, he was a genius at that time. He was considered to be the next best after Poincare.
He has done many major contributions to mathematics. Many of you would have heard about the Hilbert Transform which is widely used in Signal Processing applications. He has many mathematical terms named after him, including Hilbert space (an infinite dimensional Euclidean space), Hilbert curves, the Hilbert classification, Invariant Hypothesis, Algebraic Number Theory, and the Hilbert inequality etc... The list goes on.
At the
1900 Paris conference of the International Congress of Mathematicians at the Sorbonne he set the stage for almost the whole of 20th Century mathematics with the
enumeration of the 23 most important open mathematical questions.
If anyone is interested please refer to the link above. Some of these problems still remain unresolved. The Clay Mathematics Institute’s Millennium Prizes are a 21st-century version of Hilbert’s original proposal.
The last years of Hilbert's life was affected by the Nazi rule. The Jewish faculty of The University of Göttingen was closed. Sadly he passed away on 14th February in 1943 - the rest of the world didn't know until six months afterwards.
His tombstone is marked with his own words which he said when announcing his retirement from the Society of German Scientists and Physicians in 1930....
" We must know - We will Know"
Note: He was forced to retire from teaching in 1930 with the Hitler's policy of forbidding Jews from teaching positions.
It's said that at a banquet, the minister of education asked Hilbert, "And how is mathematics in Göttingen now that it has been freed of the Jewish influence?" Hilbert replied, "Mathematics in Göttingen? There is really none any more."...
A recent video on the Hilbert Infinite Paradox. -
How An Infinite Hotel Ran Out Of Room
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Post added on Nov 25, 2021 at 2:35 PM
