Tables, chairs, and beer mugs

pp. 57-64

in: Constance Reid, Hilbert, Berlin, Springer, 1996

Abstract

The announcement that Hilbert would lecture during the winter of 1898–99 on the elements of geometry astonished the students to whom he had talked "only number fields' since his arrival in Göttingen three years before. Yet the new interest was not entirely without antecedent.