Meta Math!: The Quest for Omega

Note the exclamation point: Chaitin is on fire about math and is unable to restrain his enthusiasm. No mere number cruncher, he is renowned for finding another proof of Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem and another for Alan Turing's "halting problem" in computation. Chaitin explains these two achievements here, in prose that is difficult for general readers to follow, but the spirit he brings to his subject will be apparent to all. Chaitin radiates his zeal like a preacher seeking converts.

His asides often directly speak to students who might want to become professional mathematicians, stoking their fire, for example, with the vulnerability of even ancient theorems to new analysis (he sketches two ways, in addition to Euclid's, to prove the infinity of prime numbers). Chaitin's freewheeling expressions of mathematical creativity will be this work's lasting impression.

 

 

 

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