January 24, 2017 Tuesday
Bedtime Story
The Mathematician and Logician Who Held Four
As we know by now, Cantor’s work on set theory attracted the
attention of great mathematicians like David Hilbert, Bertrand Russell, John
von Neumann, Richard Dedekind, Vitali, Ernst Zermelo and Abraham Fraenkel besides
the rest.
It would also attract the attention of a curious little boy who
was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire of 1906 in the city of Brno that now
belongs to the Czech Republic.
Czech Republic is a fairly new country considering its formation
took place in 1993 (a mere 25 years ago) as a result of the Velvet Divorce with
Slovakia.
This little boy with unquenchable curiosity was given the name of
Kurt Gödel.
This boy would hold 4 citizenships in his life time.
Born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, after the end of the World
War I in 1918 when this empire perished and from it rose the nation of
Czechoslovakia, he became a Czechoslovak citizen at the age of 12.
Then when he grew to be 23 years old in 1929, considering himself
not a Czechoslovak but an Austrian, he deliberately changed his citizenship to
Austrian.
It seems the Germans did not agree with him.
The Germans considered Austria as a part of their own territory
since historically some part of Austria had long been under the German territory.
Consider these following blocks of kingdoms or nations of the
Western and Central Europe:
Holy Roman Empire (800 AD to 1806)
German Confederation (1815 – 1866)
Prussia (1525 – 1947)
Kingdom of Bavaria (1805 – 1918)
All these Empires and Kingdoms are essentially Germany in one
sense and all of them held the territory that goes now as Austria either partly
or wholly.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling
chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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