German mathematician David Hilbert. During his college years, he formed a deep friendship with A.Hurwitz and Cherkowski, and their frequent exchanges had a lifelong impact on their respective mathematical research.
1899, Hilbert was invited by the preparatory organization of the second international congress of mathematics to make an important speech at the conference, and Hilbert accepted the invitation and planned to make a corresponding speech at the 1900 international congress of mathematicians. After reviewing the speeches made by Hurwitz and Poincare at the first international congress of mathematicians, Hilbert has two ideas: either to make a speech to defend pure mathematics, or to discuss the development direction of mathematics in the new century and point out the important problems that mathematicians should concentrate on solving. After consulting Minkowski and Hurwitz, Hilbert decided to choose the second idea and began eight months of careful preparation, during which Minkowski and Hurwitz also helped Hilbert revise his speech.
"Who among us doesn't want to open the curtain of the future and take a look at the prospects and mysteries of our scientific development in the next century?" 1900 On August 8, the second day of the conference, Hilbert began his historic speech on mathematical problems. Because of time, he only discussed 10 questions such as "continuum hypothesis" and "compatibility of arithmetic axioms", and later published the remaining 13 questions.
The history of the development of mathematics since the 20th century shows that the 23 problems raised by Hilbert involve many important fields of modern mathematics, which have aroused lasting concern in the field of mathematics, and their solutions have had a great influence on mathematics in the 20th century.