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The Continuum Hypothesis

historic

Posed by Georg Cantor · 1878 · set theory / foundations · resolved 1963

The problem

CH: every infinite subset of \mathbb{R} is either countable or equinumerous with \mathbb{R}. Asked as posed, the problem has no truth value decidable from the standard axioms: ZFC ⊬ CH and ZFC ⊢ ¬CH is equally impossible — CH is independent of ZFC.

History & significance

Cantor spent his life on it; Hilbert placed it FIRST on his 1900 list. Gödel (1938) built the constructible universe L ⊨ CH; Paul Cohen (1963) invented forcing to build models with ¬CH, winning the Fields Medal for it — the only problem on Hilbert's list resolved by proving no answer exists within the accepted framework.