4/28/06: 100th anniversary of Kurt Godel's birth (even though he doesn't complete me)

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of mathematician Kurt Godel, who is best known for his two "incompleteness" theorems.

As written in wikipedia (I'm too lazy to go through the comemorative articles in the Notices of the AMS to check this), the First Incompleteness Theorem is stated as follows: For any consistent formal theory that proves basic arithmetical truths, it is possible to construct an arithmetical statement that is true 1 but not provable in the theory. That is, any consistent theory of a certain expressive strength is incomplete.

The Second Incompleteness Theorem can be stated as follows: For any formal theory T including basic arithmetical truths and also certain truths about formal provability, T includes a statement of its own consistency if and only if T is inconsistent.


There are a bunch of events (conferences and whatnot) in 2006 in honor of Godel. See this website for some information.

Note added after sleep: I was out of it. I meant to post this tomorrow. Anyway, 4/28 is the 100th anniversary of Godel and I lost my chance to initiate my post on the correct day. :(