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"An Accidental Man": Review of The Unknowable, by Gregory Chaitin. Reviewed by Marcus Chown. New Scientist, 18 December 1999, page 52.
In his book The Unknowable, Gregory Chaitin describes how he was inspired by the work of the Kurt Goedel and Alan Turing to become a mathematician. Goedel's work in mathematical logic and Turing's work on the foundations of computing revolutionized mathematics. Today Chaitin is one of the pioneers of algorithmic complexity theory, a branch of mathematics that attempts to measure how difficult it is to solve problems by computer. According to the review, Chaitin finds "randomness at the heart of arithmetic, and therefore of mathematics as a whole." Chown writes, "The Unknowable is Chaitin's enthusiastic and extremely readable exposition of all these ideas."
--- Allyn Jackson
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