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G
ö
del, von Neumann, Turing, and Church
Gödel and the U.S. Constitution
After Austria's annexation by Germany in 1938, Gödel lost his posi-
tion at the University of Vienna and was found fit for conscription into
the German army. With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Gödel and
his wife set out for Princeton in the United States. Because of the dangers
of a North Atlantic crossing, they traveled via the trans-Siberian railway
and then by ship across the Pacific. He ran out of money in Japan and had
to telegraph to Princeton for a loan (
Fig. 6.11
).
After the war, Gödel wanted to become an American citizen, and
he asked Albert Einstein and economist Oskar Morgenstern to be his wit-
nesses. Of course, Gödel took his preparation for the citizenship hearing
very seriously and studied the history of North America, and of Princeton,
as well as the U.S. Constitution. At this point, Morgenstern recounts:
Fig. 6.11. Telegram from Gödel in
Yokohama, Japan, to the Institute for
Advanced Study in Princeton, requesting
$200 for emergency travel expenses.
[Gödel] rather excitedly told me that in looking at the Constitution, to
his distress, he had found some inner contradictions and that he could show how in a perfectly legal manner
it would be possible for somebody to become a dictator and set up a Fascist regime, never intended by those
who drew up the Constitution.
8
Einstein and Morgenstern went with Gödel to the citizenship ceremony, and the three of them sat
down before the examiner. The examiner first asked Einstein and Morgenstern whether they thought Gödel
would make a good citizen, to which they assured him that this would be the case. The examiner then
turned to Gödel.
Examiner:
Now Mr Gödel, where do you come from?
Gödel:
Where do I come from? Austria.
Examiner:
What kind of government did you have in Austria?
Gödel:
It was a republic, but the constitution was such that it finally was changed into a dictatorship.
Examiner:
Oh! This is very bad. This could not happen in this country.
Gödel:
Oh yes [it can], I can prove it!
9
Fortunately, the examiner was a wise man and refrained from following up on Gödel's new inconsistency
proof of the U.S. Constitution!
Turing and the conceptual foundation of computers
Although John von Neumann did not refer explicitly to Turing's paper on computability and Turing machines
when he wrote the famous “First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC,” he was well aware of the importance
of Turing's work and even offered him a post as his research assistant at Princeton. The mathematician
Stanislaw Ulam, who later worked at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project, recalled that “von Neumann
mentioned to [him] Turing's name several times in 1939 . . . concerning mechanical ways to develop formal
mathematical systems.”
10
Similarly, another physicist who worked at Los Alamos, Stanley Frankel, remem-
bers von Neumann's enthusiasm for Turing's work in 1943 or 1944:
Von Neumann introduced me to that paper and at his urging I studied it with care. Many people have acclaimed
von Neumann as the “father of the computer” . . . but I am sure that he would never have made that mistake
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