David Hilbert

David Hilbert was born in Königsberg in 1862 and spent most of his career at the University of Göttingen, which he turned into the mathematical capital of the world. He contributed foundational work to algebraic number theory, functional analysis (Hilbert spaces), the axiomatisation of geometry, and the formalist programme in mathematical logic. His 1900 address to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Paris listed 23 unsolved problems that shaped twentieth-century mathematics.

In physics he worked in parallel with Einstein in 1915 on the field equations of general relativity, arriving at them from a variational principle within a few days of Einstein's final formulation. He recruited Emmy Noether to Göttingen to help with the theory and defended her against the Philosophical Faculty's refusal to appoint her: "I do not see that the sex of the candidate is an argument against her admission as a Privatdozent. After all, the Senate is not a bathhouse." He died in Göttingen in 1943, under the shadow of the Nazi regime that had effectively emptied his department.