  It was from the lectures of the topologist M. H. A. (Max) Newman in that year that he learnt of Gödel's 1931 proof of the formal incompleteness of logical systems rich enough to include arithmetic, and of the outstanding problem in the foundations of mathematics as posed by Hilbert: the “Entscheidungsproblem” (decision problem). Was there a method by which it could be decided, for any given mathematical proposition, whether or not it was provable?