Gödel on the continuum hypothesis - photo 1
Gödel on the continuum hypothesis - photo 2

Gödel on the continuum hypothesis

Lot 93
16.10.2020 10:00UTC +00:00
Classic
Sold
$ 25 000
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUnited Kingdom, London
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ID 411501
Lot 93 | Gödel on the continuum hypothesis
Estimate value
$ 3 000 – 5 000
GÖDEL, Kurt (1906-1978). The Consistency of the Continuum Hypothesis. Princeton University Press, [1953].

Rare presentation copy and a "classic of modern mathematics," signed and inscribed by Kurt Gödel on the half-title: "RM - Herzlich - Kurt." The recipient was a Princeton undergraduate, Richard A. Macksey, who went on to a phenomenal career. Macksey was the founding force of Johns Hopkins' Department of Comparative Thought and Literature.

In 1940, when The Consistency of the Continuum Hypothesis was first published (this is the third printing), Gödel and his Jewish wife Adele had recently fled Nazi Germany and settled permanently in Princeton. They were helped in no small degree by Albert Einstein, a close friend and protector as well as fellow faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Study. Gödel is most famous for proving the incompleteness theorem, wreaking "fruitful havoc in mathematics, logic and beyond ... [The present paper] is a classic of modern mathematics. The continuum hypothesis, introduced by mathematician George Cantor in 1877, states that there is no set of numbers between the integers and real numbers. It was later included as the first of mathematician David Hilbert's twenty-three unsolved math problems, famously delivered as a manifesto to the field of mathematics at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris in 1900. In The Consistency of the Continuum Hypothesis Gödel set forth his proof for this problem" (PUP). This edition is an offprint from the Annals of Mathematics Studies 3. The full title of the paper is "The Consistency of the Axiom of Choice and of the Generalized Continuum-Hypothesis with the Axioms of Set Theory," but it is more widely known by the shortened version used here on the cover.

We trace no other signed papers by Gödel in the auction records of ABPC or RBH.

Octavo. Original orange printed wrappers (a little staining and creasing, backstrip rubbed). Provenance: Richard A. Macksey (1931-2019; presentation inscription and ownership signature dated 1953).
Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
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01.10.2020 – 16.10.2020
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