MATHEMATICIAN

David Hilbert

1862 - 1943

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David Hilbert (; German: [ˈdaːvɪt ˈhɪlbɐt]; 23 January 1862 – 14 February 1943) was a German mathematician and philosopher of mathematics and one of the most influential mathematicians of his time. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas including invariant theory, the calculus of variations, commutative algebra, algebraic number theory, the foundations of geometry, spectral theory of operators and its application to integral equations, mathematical physics, and the foundations of mathematics (particularly proof theory). He adopted and defended Georg Cantor's set theory and transfinite numbers. In 1900, he presented a collection of problems that set a course for mathematical research of the 20th century. Read more on Wikipedia

His biography is available in different languages on Wikipedia. David Hilbert is the 22nd most popular mathematician (down from 17th in 2019), the 34th most popular biography from Russia (up from 37th in 2019) and the most popular Russian Mathematician.

Hilbert is most famous for proving that the set of all real numbers is not countable.

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Among MATHEMATICIANS

Among mathematicians, David Hilbert ranks 22 out of 1,004. Before him are Pierre de Fermat, Bertrand Russell, Jacob Bernoulli, Jean le Rond d'Alembert, Henri Poincaré, and Pierre-Simon Laplace. After him are Joseph Fourier, Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet, Évariste Galois, Hero of Alexandria, John von Neumann, and Srinivasa Ramanujan.

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1862, David Hilbert ranks 4. Before him are Gustav Klimt, Claude Debussy, and Maurice Maeterlinck. After him are Philipp Lenard, Gerhart Hauptmann, Allvar Gullstrand, William Henry Bragg, Hilma af Klint, O. Henry, Aristide Briand, and Arthur Schnitzler. Among people deceased in 1943, David Hilbert ranks 2. Before him is Nikola Tesla. After him are Sergei Rachmaninoff, Pieter Zeeman, Karl Landsteiner, George Washington Carver, Camille Claudel, Isoroku Yamamoto, Simone Weil, Henrik Pontoppidan, Leslie Howard, and Boris III of Bulgaria.

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In Russia

Among people born in Russia, David Hilbert ranks 34 out of 3,761. Before him are Dmitri Shostakovich (1906), Isaac Asimov (1920), Vasily Zaitsev (1915), Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918), Alexander III of Russia (1845), and Konstantin Chernenko (1911). After him are Yul Brynner (1920), Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873), Valentina Tereshkova (1937), Georgy Zhukov (1896), Nicholas I of Russia (1796), and Alexander I of Russia (1777).

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Among MATHEMATICIANS In Russia

Among mathematicians born in Russia, David Hilbert ranks 1. After him are Georg Cantor (1845), Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850), Nikolai Lobachevsky (1792), Andrey Kolmogorov (1903), Christian Goldbach (1690), Grigori Perelman (1966), Leonid Kantorovich (1912), Alexander Friedmann (1888), Andrey Markov (1856), Aleksandr Lyapunov (1857), and Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov (1943).

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