Enigma of the Generations

Our people have been fond of playing on riddles and problems for so long. When they get know or discover the answers to them, there goes their satisfaction. Yet what is awing is on the explanation, on the process or on how they get to arrive to the answer.

Mathematicians loved this. They fancy mathematical problems so much that David Hilbert has made and presented the 23 most important mathematical there is to the other mathematicians. Then on, the world began the quest for the solutions and the answers to such problems. It is like solving a Sherlock mystery case at a wide mathematical range. Well, it has to consider the depths of the subject itself so, I think it is one of the hardest cases history has ever met.

However, there are some people that had already solved and understood some of Hilbert’s problems. Let us take George Cantor. Before him, nobody understood the concept of infinity so well than he did. He also proved that infinity has an even bigger infinity (decimal infinity is bigger than whole number’s). It is odd, but logically it is true. Infinity is really complex yet I hadn’t understood it that way before the film.

Another is the work of Plunkerei (I think I’ve got the spelling wrong). Well, he had devised techniques on solving the problem “Weather the solar system will continue clockwork or fly apart”. The people of his time had cherished his ideas until the Chaos theory crushed his fate. True, it is a mathematician’s worst nightmare especially when your work has almost been published.

Of these shatters, there is another one. Hilbert has provided the people that-not one of his problems cannot be solved. He was trusted by his statement “We must know, we will know”. However, Kurt Godel had contradicted it with philosophy. And it served him messed.

That had never ended the people’s quest for Hilberts’ problems. The 10^th problem:” Is there any universal method that tells if an equation has any whole number solutions or not”. It wasn’t easy as Julia Robinson has been telling (Robinson Hypothesis: No method existed). Yet time had exposed Prof. Matiyasevich’s theory which had devised the method. I learned that not every individual who are on the quest gets to have their prize as what they had expected. Sometimes, we may not even be as good as those better than us even though we put much of our effort. For Roinson, even though she hadn’t solved it, she had received so much credit and thanks from Matiyasevich.

So much of these problems, Mathematicians really are inspiring. Not in the equations and how they solve the problems, but in how they work for it. They have dedicated their passion to math. Well, math indeed has proofs and doubts and it is evolving to get rid of these doubts. Mathematicians of the generations also have evolved their perseverance for a better and clearer understanding of the world of Maths.