Kurt Gödel (1906-1978) was an eccentric but brilliant mathematical prodigy. He was born on April 28, 1906 in the city of Brno of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which is now the second-largest city in the Czech Republic. At the University of Vienna as a young mathematician he became famous for proving the existence of mathematical statements that are true but unprovable (Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, 1931). In 1940, having escaped the Nazi takeover of Austria, Gödel and his wife Adele took the Trans-Siberian Railway all the way to the Pacific, sailed from Japan to San Francisco, crossed the USA by train, and

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