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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent.
Review: An excellent biography of Godel. Examines his personal life and mathematical work in an integrated manner. Dawson is thorough, well-researched, and shows a command of the mathematics involved. Never sensational or anecdotal, he provides the most accurate picture available of the real Godel. This is not a popular account of Godel's work, so the reader will need an understanding of fundamental mathematical logic and Godel's theorem to appreciate much of the book. But Dawson does provide a lot of history of mathematical logic, including a great chapter on developments up to 1928 that could be read by itself. The appendix provides a chronology, genealogy, and "biographical vignettes" of other important logicians.
Rating:
Summary: The definitive biography of Kurt Godel
Review: Knowing what went on in the mind of Kurt Godel will forever be unattainable. Nonetheless, John Dawson comes as close as possible to understanding what made Godel click.Having catalogued Godel's works and personal papers, Dawson saw aspects of Godel's life that perhaps no one short of his wife had seen. The book is a fascinating jaunt through the through the lives of one of the greatest minds of the 20th century. What is also interesting is Godel's interaction with personalities such as Einstein and Van Neumann. While the mathematics is often abstract, as can be expected, Logical Dilemmas is a mesmerizing read.
Rating:
Summary: The definitive biography of Kurt Godel
Review: Knowing what went on in the mind of Kurt Godel will forever be unattainable. Nonetheless, John Dawson comes as close as possible to understanding what made Godel click. Having catalogued Godel's works and personal papers, Dawson saw aspects of Godel's life that perhaps no one short of his wife had seen. The book is a fascinating jaunt through the through the lives of one of the greatest minds of the 20th century. What is also interesting is Godel's interaction with personalities such as Einstein and Van Neumann. While the mathematics is often abstract, as can be expected, Logical Dilemmas is a mesmerizing read.
Rating: 
Summary: By a Mathematician for Mathematicians
Review: Writing a biography of anyone is difficult. How can a writer, no matter how talented, really claim to understand someone well enough to give an overview of his life? When the subject is a genius like Kurt Godel, whose name is known by few and whose work is really understood by even less, the job must be even more difficult. Fortunately, people like Mr. Dawson are will to give it a shot and he succeeds fairly well. In putting together this biography, Mr. Dawson has the advantage of being mathematician. Additionally, he has the advantage of being the mathematician who catalogued Godel's papers after his death. This gives him a lot of insight into Godel that other writers cannot have and he weaves quotations from these papers into the biography very well. Mr. Dawson's is a well-documented and logical biography that is short on conjecture and long on footnotes. In brief, it is a biography about a mathematician clearly written by a mathematician. This is both its strength and its weakness. Actually, I like the purely biographical sections of this book very much. The biographical information is clear and informative, though a bit dry in the academic style favored by mathematicians and scientists. Fortunately, having lived and worked among these people, I am comfortable with this style. More importantly, I feel like I have a better idea now of who Godel was and what he was like from reading this book. His focus on his work, his relationship with his family and friends (particularly his wife) and his ultimate decent into mental illness are much more in focus for me now. On the other hand, the sections that deal with Godel's mathematics are much more difficult to take. The discussion of mathematics in this book goes far beyond what most people are going to be able to handle. I fear the average reader even with a decent math background who comes across this book will drop it as soon as the mathematics starts and that is unfortunate. (I am always looking for books to promote math even among non-mathematicians. This one does not do it.) A reader who can handle the math, however, will find this book revealing.
Rating:
Summary: By a Mathematician for Mathematicians
Review: Writing a biography of anyone is difficult. How can a writer, no matter how talented, really claim to understand someone well enough to give an overview of his life? When the subject is a genius like Kurt Godel, whose name is known by few and whose work is really understood by even less, the job must be even more difficult. Fortunately, people like Mr. Dawson are will to give it a shot and he succeeds fairly well. In putting together this biography, Mr. Dawson has the advantage of being mathematician. Additionally, he has the advantage of being the mathematician who catalogued Godel's papers after his death. This gives him a lot of insight into Godel that other writers cannot have and he weaves quotations from these papers into the biography very well. Mr. Dawson's is a well-documented and logical biography that is short on conjecture and long on footnotes. In brief, it is a biography about a mathematician clearly written by a mathematician. This is both its strength and its weakness. Actually, I like the purely biographical sections of this book very much. The biographical information is clear and informative, though a bit dry in the academic style favored by mathematicians and scientists. Fortunately, having lived and worked among these people, I am comfortable with this style. More importantly, I feel like I have a better idea now of who Godel was and what he was like from reading this book. His focus on his work, his relationship with his family and friends (particularly his wife) and his ultimate decent into mental illness are much more in focus for me now. On the other hand, the sections that deal with Godel's mathematics are much more difficult to take. The discussion of mathematics in this book goes far beyond what most people are going to be able to handle. I fear the average reader even with a decent math background who comes across this book will drop it as soon as the mathematics starts and that is unfortunate. (I am always looking for books to promote math even among non-mathematicians. This one does not do it.) A reader who can handle the math, however, will find this book revealing.
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