Part of the Casswiki article series Natural science
Kurt Gödel, 1906-1978 , was the foremost logicians of the 20th century.
He began his career in Vienna, Austria and fled the second world war to the United States, where he resided up until his death. He worked at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, IAS, home also to Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, John Nash and many other great names of science.
Gödel is best known for developing his incompleteness theorem, which states that no axiomatic system powerful enough to describe integer arithmetic can be proven to be complete. This means that the axioms of the system cannot be proven to be contradiction free. Only a more powerful meta-system may prove another system, hence mathematics as a whole is open-ended, where no system can be its own proof of consistency.
Gödel later worked on general relativity and became famous for interpretations involving rotating universes and time loops.
Towards later age, he became intensely paranoid and died of starvation, certain that he was being poisoned.