My favorite theorem in fiction: the first incompleteness theorem.
Andrew-David Bjork
Associate Professor
Mathematics
Siena Heights University
Many authors have incorporated mathematics into their writings. Few have done so as intentionally as Neal Stephenson. His novel Cryptonomicon, published in 1999, holds one of my favorite narrations of Gödel's celebrated result. This talk will follow and explain Stephenson's treatment of the first incompleteness theorem. I will also invite a conversation on the liberal arts today, and why we care so deeply about more than mathematics.