on Kurt Gödel's Citizenship

on Kurt Gödel's Citizenship

Recently I had been reading about Kurt Gödel's work and came across an amusing story revolving around Gödel's study for his US citizenship interview and contradictions in the US constitution.

Oskar Morgenstern, a german mathematician, recounts the story in a letter for publication that was 'lost' for several years. The story is quite humourous and involves another great mind which was also friends with Gödel, Albert Einstein. The story goes somewhat like this:

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In 1946, Gödel asked mathematician Oskar Morgensten and Albert Einstein to act as witnesses for the process of obtaining his US citizenship. Gödel, being the way he was, took the matter of the possible questions asked during the interview very seriously and acted accordingly. He began learning about the history of North America, starting from the very earliest settlers all the way to studying the constitution and even details of the particular town he lived in as well as the way it was run.

This level of completeness in this matter amused both Einstein and Morgenstern but was no surprise, they knew part of their job with Gödel was to ease his worries regarding the citizenship. And that they did, they talked to Gödel and tried to convince him that the interview questions would be general matters and he need not obsess about every detail but to no avail. Gödel was Gödel and more information he absorbed and more details he learned.

When the time came that Gödel's attention was directed towards the US constitution, his precise sense of logic allowed him to find inconsistencies which lead to "a perfectly legal manner" for someone to "become a dictator and enforce a fascist regime" in the US. This, of course, troubled Morgenstern and Einstein who again tried to shift Gödels attention away from talk of American fascist regimes since this would surely cause an uproar if brought up during his interview.

Many months went by and the day of the interview finally came. As it turns out, the examiner during the interview asked Gödel about his country of origin's kind of government, Austria. Gödel responded that it had changed to a dictatorship to which the examiner replied that such a system could never be implemented in the US. It seemed that the unlikely subject of American fascist regimes was indeed about to come up. Einstein and Morgenstern were horrified at the possibility that indeed Gödel would correct him and explain just how such a thing could be accomplished legally. Luckily this did not happen and Gödel became a US citizen.

I found this account quite humourous and gives a little insight into the personalities of a few great minds. I've uploaded the complete version of Morgenstern's account to google drive for those that would like to read it first hand.