Book - 15 continued ...

In his later years, he moved to Institute of Advance studies at Princeton.  In 1948 he decided to seek American citizenship and began to study US constitution. To his consternation, he discovered a loophole in the US constitution by which US could be transformed into dictatorship. Morgenstern, the economist, and Einstein were to be his witnesses; they asked him not to mention it before the Judge the next date. But the word dictatorship did come up and it took not only Einstein and Morgenstern but also the Judge to calm him down from launching into a detailed and lengthy discourse about his discovery. In the later years he would eat food cooked by him only for the fear that it may be poisoned. Well there is a thin line between genius and insanity. 

Despite the fact that Gödel was one of the greats of the last time century, he is  not known to many.  This is the purpose for writing this book; this is so explained in the first paragraph of the preface.

'As part of its millennium celebration, Time magazine published a list of the 100 greatest people of the 20^th century. On this list was their choice of the greatest mathematician —Kurt Gödel. Most likely, if you were to randomly select 100 people and ask them. “Do you know who Kurt Gödel is?, it's almost certain you'd receive not a single positive response. That would definitely not be true if you asked about the greatest physicist of the 20^th century (Einstein) or the greatest chemist (Linus Pauling?) or the greatest writer (??). This short volume is an attempt to bring Gödel's work and life to the attention of a broad audience, and thus to at least partially bring his magnificent achievement out into the mainstream of modern intellectual discourse.' 

The book achieves this purpose however it has a few chapters about artificial intelligence,  thinking machines, and complexity. They are slightly difficult for persons other than those who have keen interest or already have some knowledge in  that area. One may skip them but if logic,  or artificial intelligence, or computer software interest you or you wish to seek career in these fields then do read them.