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Kurt Gödel (1906–1978).
Can a machine prove? is the title of an article published thirty years ago in issue 8 of Tangente. Using elementary examples, it showed that if an argument could reduce a question to checking a finite, manageable number of cases by computer, then the question could be settled by a computer-assisted proof. At the time, many mathematicians still rejected this principle, arguing—quite rightly, in the strictest sense—that one would then have to prove that the operating system being used was itself error-free.
