In the original time and space, the last good friend Einstein made in the last period of his life was also a long-lasting friend. It was Gödel who proposed the incompleteness theorem.
There are many reasons why the two of them can become good friends:
For example, they both work at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton;
A German and an Austrian have similar living customs and both speak German;
We are all smart people, and when we communicate with each other, there is no big gap in IQ;
etc.
But no one can explain why Einstein liked Gödel so much. Even when he won the first Albert Einstein Award in 1951, he chose to award the award named after himself to Got Gödel as a good friend.
In addition to the points mentioned above, are there any other reasons?
For example, Gödel proposed and proved the incompleteness theorem, and slapped his nemesis, the unpleasant old bald Hilbert, hard.
Anyway, in this current time and space, Einstein was very happy to see that Chen Muwu's incompleteness theorem was published in the newspaper, which made Hilbert's efforts in recent years come to nothing.
Einstein even went to a reporter from the Berliner Zeitung to express his views on Chen Muwu's incompleteness theorem.
At that time, the reporter of the Berliner Zeitung was also worried about this matter because he did not know who to interview.
Hilbert was a highly respected German mathematician, and he was already very old, and he was one of the parties involved in the incident.
His views before being pointed out by a junior were all wrong. He might be angry or anxious to get angry.
In the first case, interviewing Hilbert is likely to result in a scolding.
But in the second case, interviewing him is equivalent to rubbing salt into the wound. If the old man is so old, if he gets angry and loses his temper, then he himself will be the culprit.
Instead of interviewing Hilbert, the reporter found several other mathematicians in Berlin.
But they all kept silent about this matter.
Hilbert is now a master figure in German mathematics. Other mathematicians are either his disciples, nephews or grandsons.
The Proceedings of the Royal Society of Science, which officially publishes the full text of Chen Muwu's paper, has not yet been released. No one knows what the full paper looks like and whether there are any errors in the content.
Just relying on a piece of news reprinted from the British media in the newspaper, no one dared to judge whether this matter was right or wrong, even with Russell's endorsement.
And no matter whether it is right or wrong, if you rashly accept an interview with a newspaper reporter and express your opinion on this matter, it is not the same as judging your master, uncle or master, and it will definitely offend Hilbert.
At this moment, Einstein came to the door, helping the reporter solve an urgent need.
Although Einstein is not a mathematician, his scientific status is extremely high in Germany and even the world, and his reputation is among the best.
There is absolutely no problem in letting him express his opinion. In this way, the sales volume of the newspaper will be much higher than that of interviewing a few mathematicians who are not famous in the eyes of the public.
So the reporter received Einstein warmly and asked for his opinion on Chen Muwu's point out that Hilbert was wrong.
Einstein's evaluation of Chen Muwu seemed to go back to before the autumn of 1924. The latter had not yet proposed that damn probability wave, and was still a staunch supporter of the former in the fields of relativity and photon theory.
His compliments and compliments made the reporter sitting opposite couldn't help but wonder how many marks of benefits Chen Muwu had remitted to Einstein to allow him to praise him like this.
“Although the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Science, which published the full text of Dr. Chen’s paper, has not yet been released, and we still have no way of knowing how he proved the incompleteness theorem, I believe that this time, the winner will be Dr. Chen.
“When I first met Dr. Chen in China, and only had one brief exchange with him, I knew that this man would become something great in the future.
"You see, things developed just as I expected. Dr. Chen already received his PhD within one year of arriving at Cambridge University; within two years, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
“And he has been involved in more than one scientific field for a long time. The first was physics, then astronomy, chemistry, and now mathematics.
“The last people who were able to achieve such comprehensive scientific research, I think of France’s Poincaré and Britain’s Lord Rayleigh III.
“But these two people, compared with Dr. Chen, each has their own shortcomings.
"Lord Rayleigh had never studied astronomy, but Poincaré, like me, was very poor at doing experiments and was a pure theorist.
“But no matter Lord Rayleigh, Professor Poincaré or Dr. Chen, all three of them have one thing in common, that is, they all received their education outside Germany.
"Why are the education in the UK and France, the same European countries, able to cultivate multi-faceted and multi-disciplinary talents like them, but we in Germany cannot?
"Because the Germans are very serious about internal fighting, Göttingen looks down on Berlin and Hamburg, the so-called 'German' scientists look down on their Jewish colleagues, and mathematicians look down on other disciplines...
"If things go on like this, the gap between Germany and Britain and France in education will only get wider and wider, and it will never be able to cultivate talents like Dr. Chen. This is something that German educators should reflect on.
“I even feel a little lucky now. Fortunately, Professor Planck did not invite Dr. Chen to study abroad at Humboldt University in Berlin, but instead let him go to the University of Cambridge in the UK.
"If Dr. Chen really comes to Germany, then I think that the history of human science may forever lose a multi-disciplinary generalist and gain a rigid physicist."
“Having said so much, let me go back to Dr. Chen’s new mathematical discoveries this time.
"The reason why I thought Dr. Chen was correct even before I saw the paper was because his previous research in other disciplines was occasionally as hard to accept as now, but basically all of it was correct. of.
"And this time Russell, the British master of mathematical logic, is standing up for him. The plan proposed by Professor Hilbert with confidence may already be in danger.
“I would like to use your newspaper to persuade Professor Hilbert and hope that he will not be unhappy because his mistakes were pointed out by a young student.
"His achievements in mathematics are already very great. A small mistake cannot conceal his brilliance in other aspects.
"Long before Professor Hilbert, Dr. Chen pointed out an error in my gravitational field equation through astronomical observation data. I should not have blindly added a cosmic term to the equation in order to maintain a static universe. Learn constants.
"After checking the calculations later, I found that the point of view put forward by Dr. Chen was correct, so I have admitted our mistake to the physics community.
“Everyone makes mistakes, and making mistakes is not a big deal, as long as you correct them.
"Even Dr. Chen makes mistakes, but he is still a young and energetic young man and is reluctant to admit it.
“I hope he can realize the mistakes he made in quantum mechanics as soon as possible, correct his mistakes in time, and make greater contributions to the development of science and the progress of mankind.
"Finally, I would like to say that those mathematicians who try to standardize mathematics in order to unify science are somewhat unrealistic.
"In my mind, mathematics is just a 'fancy science', far less practical than physics.
“Even if you want to find the universal laws of our entire universe, you shouldn’t start with mathematics, but with physics.
"The work I am currently doing is trying to unify the two basic forces of interaction, gravity and electromagnetic force, and try to find the ultimate law of the operation of the universe."
The reporter was overjoyed. He thought Einstein's views were just a few sentences, but he didn't expect that he would publish such a long speech, and there were many sentences in it that would be very topical if taken individually.
As for his remarks about criticizing German education and mathematics, he also praised Chen Muwu so highly.
Although these are controversial, the reporter does not intend to change a sentence, a word or even a letter.
Anyway, the words were spoken by Einstein with red lips and white teeth. He was just a faithful recorder of words.
"Professor Einstein, thank you for coming here today to be interviewed by me."
"It doesn't matter, this is what I should do. When will this interview be published?"
"It may be either tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. I will try to publish it as soon as possible."
"Very well, very well, then I'll trouble you."
Einstein walked out of the editorial office of the Berliner Zeitung in a happy mood. The interview he accepted today, through openly bragging about Chen Muwu, also implicitly disparaged Hilbert.
Einstein was not a grudge-bearing person, but if Hilbert made a mistake, it's okay for me to say a few words, right?
At the end, he also praised Chen Muwu. In this interview, he praised him so highly. This young man should be very grateful to him, right?
Maybe he will give up his childish and stubborn idea?
Throughout Germany, the Berliner Zeitung was not the only newspaper to reprint the news in the Manchester Guardian, and Einstein was not the only one to read the news.
In Göttingen, Hilbert's new assistant von Neumann, who had just been recruited at the beginning of this year, walked into his teacher's office with the "Göttingen Daily News" that reproduced the news.
"Göttingen Zeitung" is the largest circulation newspaper in the cabaret and the local area. It was a German nationalist newspaper at the beginning, but it quickly changed after the First World War and increasingly adopted right-wing extremism. and report news from a state-socialist standpoint.
It was mentioned earlier that Born's student and assistant Jordan published anti-Jewish articles in newspapers under a pseudonym. It was in this newspaper.
Such a newspaper, when reprinting news, will never use the original British title, but change a new title that is more in line with their position, "The Arrogant British Guys Ridiculously Claimed That They Overturned the Great Theories of German Mathematicians".
When useful, Hilbert was the great German mathematician.
But when he was not needed, Hilbert, a pure Aryan, was even suspected of being a Jew, just because his name, David, was a name often used by Jews.
Although the title was a bit tit-for-tat, the Göttingen Zeitung still reprinted the news in full, but added a comment from the editorial board at the end, saying that the British overestimated their own capabilities and had long given up on Russell's research and turned to social criticism. , even more in name only.
This was not the first time that von Neumann saw Chen Muwu's name in a newspaper. He had been hailed as a child prodigy since he was a child. When he went to college, he suddenly discovered that there was a famous peer in the UK.
The work that von Neumann is currently doing at the University of Göttingen is also related to Chen Muwu.
He was trying to prove that matrix mechanics and wave mechanics were strictly mathematically equivalent. Dirac, who was far away at Cambridge University, was also doing the same thing.
This topic was exactly what Hilbert asked von Neumann to study.
Hilbert proposed twenty-three mathematical problems in 1900, the sixth of which was to axiomatize physical theories.
Hilbert had always disliked physicists treating mathematics as a tool but failing to use it rigorously.
He also couldn't stand a paper Chen Muwu published on quantum mechanics, which pointed out that matrix mechanics and wave mechanics could be used to calculate the same physical problem and get the same result.
Physicists believed that this paper proved the equivalence of the two mechanics, but Hilbert scorned it.
But he was disdainful and unable to spare time to do this small thing, so he put it aside until von Neumann, who had just received his doctorate from the Federal University of Technology in Zurich, came to Göttingen to be his assistant. The subject was assigned to him.
It’s just that Hilbert’s ambition to axiomaticize physical theories was impossible to realize. Not only could physical theories not be axiomatized, but even the axiomatization of mathematics, which he was most proud of, was announced by a junior student from Cambridge University. It's impossible.
When von Neumann walked into Hilbert's office with the newspaper, Hilbert was looking at the letter Russell had written to him.
Although Hilbert carefully distinguished the two concepts of "true" and "provable" in the formal system, he always believed that the two concepts were actually the same.
Therefore, after reading Russell's letter, he still believed that the British exaggerated in the letter, and the key steps in Chen Muwu's paper listed in the letter could not prove that his plan was wrong.
"John, what's the matter with you? Why do you look like this?"
"Professor Hilbert, the newspaper said that Dr. Chen of Cambridge University has proposed two incompleteness theorems, which prove that your plan is impossible to realize. The paper will be published in the Royal Society's "Natural Science Society" published next month. In the newspaper..."
"Oh, you're talking about this? There's no need to wait for the British journal. Professor Russell has already written to me to explain the core steps of that paper."
Hilbert raised the letter in his hand to von Neumann.
"Regarding this matter, my evaluation is that physicists should study physics carefully and never imagine that they can understand mathematics.
"Because physics is already a difficult thing for them."
(End of chapter)
