in Paris in 1900, the German mathematician David Hilbert spoke to the assembly. Hilbert was a professor at Gttingen, the former academic home of Gauss and Riemann. He had contributed to most areas of mathematics, from his classic Foundations of Geometry (1899) to the jointly authored Methods of Mathematical Physics. Hilbert's address at Gttingen was a survey of 23 mathematical problems that he felt would guide the work being done in mathematics during the coming century. These problems have indeed stimulated a great deal of the mathematical research of the century. When news breaks that another of the “Hilbert problems” has been solved, mathematicians all over the world await the details of the story with impatience. Important as these problems have been, an event that Hilbert could not have foreseen seems destined to play an even greater role in the future development of mathematics-namely, the invention of the programmable digital computer (Computer). Although the roots of the computer go back to the geared calculators of Pascal and Leibniz in the 17th century, it was Charles Babbage in 19th-century England who designed a machine that could automatically perform computations based on a program of instructions stored on cards or tape. Babbage's imagination outran the technology of his day, however, and it was not until the invention of the relay, then of the vacuum tube, and then of the transistor, that large-scale, programmed computation became feasible. This development has given great impetus to areas of mathematics such as numerical analysis and finite mathematics. It has suggested new areas for mathematical investigation, such as the study of algorithms. It has also become a powerful tool in areas as diverse as number theory, differential equations, and abstract algebra. In addition, the computer has made possible the solution of several long-standing problems in mathematics, such as the four-color problem first propos...
