Logician warned dictatorship possible

Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, June 14, 2006

In 1942, Kurt Godel, the Austrian born logician who brought formalized mathematics to its knees with his celebrated Incompleteness Theorem, traveled from Princeton to Trenton, N.J., with Albert Einstein to become a naturalized American citizen.

(The Incompleteness Theorem, published in 1931, proves that a mathematical system based upon a finite set of logically consistent axioms is necessarily incomplete.)

Godel, called the greatest logician since Aristotle, informed the dumbfounded judge at his naturalization hearing that he saw a fatal flaw in the United States Constitution: the presidency could become a dictatorship. Needless to say, Einstein was horrified by his colleague’s faux pas. The judge, however, demurred and Godel became an American citizen.

Sixty-four years later, Godel’s faux pas doesn’t seem like such a faux pas after all.

David N. Houghtaling

Everett