I work for Red Hat, where I lead JBoss technical direction and research/development. Prior to this I was SOA Technical Development Manager and Director of Standards. I was Chief Architect and co-founder at Arjuna Technologies, an HP spin-off (where I was a Distinguished Engineer). I've been working in the area of reliable distributed systems since the mid-80's. My PhD was on fault-tolerant distributed systems, replication and transactions. I'm also a Professor at Newcastle University and Lyon.
Friday, November 28, 2008
The Eternal Golden Braid
I first read An Eternal Golden Braid about 14 years ago and thought it was a great book. I still do. If you haven't read it then I would encourage you to do so: it is a wonderful journey through mathematics, computer science, philosophy, art and so much more. (I notice that there's a 20th anniversary edition, so that may be going on my present list to Santa since my original copy is a bit dog-eared.) So it was with some surprise that I noticed a translation of Godel's original work available! However, the reviews indicate that it may not be a good translation. But it may be worth a try anyway!
Hi Mark,
ReplyDeleteI've read the German version of the book some years ago. It's called "Gödel, Escher, Bach" and enjoyed it tremendously. Haven't read the Gödel original text though that you're refering to.
Have fun in Sweden -- i'll be there in 2 weeks, too.
Cheers, Thomas.
A recommend this as an excellent guide to Godel's proof:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.co.uk/Godels-Proof-Douglas-R-Hofstadter/dp/0814758169/ref=pd_sim_b_1/276-5253110-1523818
It's somewhat layman-ised (although by no means trivialised) so you don't need to be a maths professor to understand it.
Thanks Tim. Just added it to my basket :-)
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