Ele Willoughby, PhD @minouette@spore.social
Public

Happy birthday to David Hilbert (1862-1943)! This linocut print illustrates the paradox of Hilbert’s Grand Hotel, a thought experiment conceived by Hilbert in 1924 to show the paradox of infinite sets. If you imagine a regular hotel with a finite number of rooms, if they are all filled you can’t add more guests. In an imaginary infinite hotel however, guests are always welcome! Even if all the (conveniently numbered 1, 2, 3, ...) rooms are filled, 🧵

The print shows a grand hotel on a steep angle (with a vanishing point at infinity of course), labelled "Hilbert's Grand Hotel" below a cameo of Hilbert himself, and the slogan "No vancancy. Check in now!" Above the hotel is a glowing infinity symbol. The size of countably infinite sets, like all natural numbers {1,2,3, .... ∞ } is denoted by Aleph Nought ℵ0 shown on the two flags. Each print is printed by hand in indigo, lavendar, mint green and dark navy blue ink on Japanese kozo (or mulberry) paper, 8" x 10" (20.3 cm by 25.4 cm).
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