Q 01/05

David Hilbert pictured infinity as which full building that can always fit one more person?

A) A theater

B) A hotel

C) A prison

D) A library

Answer · why

B) A hotel

A hotel with infinitely many rooms can always shuffle its guests along to free up space, however full it is. Hilbert used the image in a lecture of 19...

Q 02/05

Defending Emmy Noether, David Hilbert reportedly called a university unlike which single-sex place?

A) A bathhouse

B) A monastery

C) A barracks

D) A boarding school

Answer · why

A) A bathhouse

A bathhouse is the place Hilbert is said to have named when the faculty objected to a woman lecturer. Noether still spent four years teaching courses ...

Q 03/05

Emanuel Lasker, a student of David Hilbert, was world champion for 27 years in which game?

A) Checkers

B) Bridge

C) Chess

D) Backgammon

Answer · why

C) Chess

Chess has had no longer-reigning world champion than Lasker, who held the title from 1894 to 1921. He was also a research mathematician whose 1905 pap...

Q 04/05

David Hilbert, a mathematician who took up physics in 1912, joked that it was too hard for whom?

A) Mathematicians

B) Philosophers

C) Physicists

D) Engineers

Answer · why

C) Physicists

Physicists, Hilbert meant, lacked the advanced mathematics their own theories demanded. A classic textbook that carries his name as co-author set out ...

Q 05/05

In David Hilbert's reported quip, points, lines and planes could be tables, chairs and what?

A) Bottles of wine

B) Glasses of beer

C) Cups of coffee

D) Loaves of bread

Answer · why

B) Glasses of beer

Glasses of beer made Hilbert's point that axioms fix only how things relate, so the things themselves can be anything. The remark sums up the modern a...