About me
| 1942 | Gert Treiber was born in Karlsruhe, Germany. |
| 1952 - 1961 | attended high school. |
| 1962 - 1970 | studied chemistry at the Universities of Karlsruhe and Heidelberg. Additive: Lectures on mathematics and physics. |
| 1965 | Studies at the Nuclear Research Center Ispra, Italy. |
| 1970 | PhD with a topic in physical chemistry. |
| 1971 | Postdoctoral Fellow at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, USA. |
| 1972 - 2005 | Professional career in a company in the chemical industry. Leading position with responsibility for technology. |
| From 2006 | After retirement, attended lectures on philosophy, mathematics, mathematical logic, relativity and quantum theory at the University of Heidelberg and the Technical University of Darmstadt. |
| Since 2008 | dealing with the topic "Foundation of Mathematics". |
| 2020 | Publication of the book “Nothing”, Crisis and reEvolution of the foundations of mathematics |
The author lives with his wife in Worms, Rhineland-Palatinate, the couple has two daughters.
In 1986 I first came into contact with Gödel's incompleteness theorems. According to these, a theorem of the theory of natural numbers exists, that can neither be proved nor disproved. Though it is undecidable, it nevertheless is demonstrably true. Consistency is assumed to be true, but cannot be proven.
I could not understand the reasoning, but I didn't have time to delve deeper into it. However, I found the amazing statements so astounding that I resolved to amplify investigation later. I only found the necessary time after my retirement in 2006. That's when I got to know the next undecidable theorem, Cantor's continuum hypothesis. What was decisive for me was the antagonistic difference between the transfinite cardinal and ordinal numbers. If a further larger element is added, the ordinal increases, but the cardinal remains the same.
Before I grasped this 'incredible' conclusion of Cantor, I had followed Hilbert, who saw Cantor's teaching as a paradise from which one could not be expelled. After that, I doubted and asked: "Where is the mistake?" In fact, the fault is verifiable.
Massive doubts persisted however, what worried me above all was that I suddenly found myself at odds with generations of mathematicians who all approved Cantor's teachings as the basis of mathematics. Taking such a prominent contrarian position deeply unsettled me.
But in the sciences, too, history is written by the victors. Only a more in-depth research uncovered
the originally massive criticism of many mathematicians, e.g. Poincaré judged that future generations will regard the transfinite as an illness from which one has recovered. Also today, a small minority rejects this theory. These findings motivated me to work through all the contradictions and ambiguities that arose in the context. Finally, my studies resulted in a fundamental revision of the alleged foundations and the publication of the book "Nothing", Cuvillier Verlag 2020.