The Entscheidungsproblem (1930s)

“Old Nassau”, Nassau Hall — the oldest building on the Princeton campus (Photo: Billy Wilson via Flickr)

In the early 1930s, the provincial town of Princeton, New Jersey was already well on its way to becoming a hotbed for mathematical exploration. Although plans for an Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) had been in the making for a while, 1930 would be the year of its founding and 1933 the year of its opening. Until 1938, “the Institute” was located in the same building as the math department at the nearby Princeton University, then called Fine Hall (now Jones Hall). On its permanent faculty “of unrivalled prestige” was “the last great universal mathematician” Hermann Weyl (1885-1955) and an elite group of topologists, including Oswald Veblen (1880-1960), James Alexander (1888-1971) and Marston Morse (1892-1977). Topologist Solomon Lefschetz (1884-1972) was there as well, although formally affiliated with Princeton, as was Veblen’s former Ph.D. student Alonzo Church (1903-95) who had…