Student Life. Moving to Vienna

Abstract

We describe in this chapter the intellectual and academic environment in which he found himself, and his student years, 1924-29. He began his studies as a student of theoretical physics, but changed his major after two years, and beginning in the autumn of 1926, he studied mathematics and philosophy. We also meet up with his important mentors in his student years: the mathematicians Hans Hahn and Karl Menger, and the philosophers Moritz Schlick and Rudolf Carnap, as well as some of his fellow students, such as Olga Taussky, and more distant or indirect influences, including Philipp Furtwängler, Heinrich Gomperz, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and L.E.J. Brouwer. And we are introduced to the Vienna Circle, in which Gödel was a (mostly silent) participant for three years, and the Mathematics Colloquium of Karl Menger, which was to be his intellectual home base for nearly 10 years.