Definition:Hilbert 23/Historical Note

Historical Note on the Hilbert 23

The Hilbert 23 were delivered by David Hilbert in a famous address at Paris in $1900$.

He considered them to be the outstanding challenges to mathematicians in the future.

There was originally going to be a $24$th problem, on a criterion for simplicity and general methods in proof theory, but Hilbert decided not to include it, as it was (like numbers $4$, $6$, $16$ and $23$) too vague to ever be described as "solved".

Sources

• 1986: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers ... (previous) ... (next): $2 \cdotp 665 \, 144 \ldots$
• 1989: Ephraim J. Borowski and Jonathan M. Borwein: Dictionary of Mathematics ... (previous) ... (next): Hilbert's problems
• 1992: George F. Simmons: Calculus Gems ... (previous) ... (next): Chapter $\text {B}.18$: Algebraic and Transcendental Numbers. $e$ is Transcendental
• 1997: David Wells: Curious and Interesting Numbers (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): $2 \cdotp 66514 \, 4 \ldots$
• 1998: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Hilbert, David (1862-1943)
• 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): Hilbert, David (1862-1943)