Five Conferences on Undecidability

TL;DR

This series of lectures explores undecidability in mathematics, covering formalization, incompleteness, model theory, and computability, aimed at students with solid mathematical background but new to logic.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive, accessible overview of undecidability topics, including formal systems, G"odel's theorems, and effective computability, with historical and technical insights.

Findings

Formalization of mathematics and set theory

Explanation of G"odel's incompleteness theorems

Examples of effective computability results

Abstract

These five lectures on undecidability were given to students with a good level in mathematics but with no special knowledge on logic. The first conference presents the formalization of mathematics with a short historical survey, the language of first order predicates and the axioms of set theory. The second and third lectures explain the incompleteness phenomena from the Hilbert program until G\"odel's theorems with a presentation of the sequent calculus of Gentzen.The fourth talk deepens model theory reasoning in the case of the continuum hypothesis, and the last conference gives examples of effective computability results.