Deborah Gambetta and Piergiorgio Odifreddi @ OGR Talks
Incompleteness: the “conceptual” earthquake that shook the world and cracked our certainties

An OGR Torino event curated by Nino D’Amico

Monday 23 March | H 6.30 PM
Binario 3 | OGR Torino

Free admission
Reservations available

On Monday 23 March, at 6.30 PM, a new appointment with OGR Talks will feature Deborah Gambetta and Piergiorgio Odifreddi in a dialogue dedicated to the most famous theorem of twentieth century logic and to the enigmatic figure of its author: Kurt Gödel.

In their talk titled Incompleteness: the “conceptual” earthquake that shook the world and cracked our certainties, Gambetta and Odifreddi will guide the audience in discovering one of the most profound revolutions in the history of scientific thought.

In 1931, with his doctoral thesis, the young Kurt Gödel brought to an end a dispute that had lasted for more than thirty years, creating an irreparable fracture in the dream of logicians and mathematicians: to found mathematics on solid and complete foundations. Gödel, just twenty five years old, proved that any formal system powerful enough to include arithmetic contains propositions that are true but cannot be proven within the system itself, shattering the dream of a complete and coherent foundation for mathematics.

But if even mathematics cannot have a solid foundation, what can we truly know? Starting from this question, the event will explore the meaning of the incompleteness theorem and the extraordinary intellectual and human story of Gödel, the logician with whom Einstein loved to take long walks in Princeton and about whom he said: “he is the man with the sharpest intelligence I have ever encountered”.

DEBORAH GAMBETTA
A Turin based writer with a background in the humanities, she was struck by the work of the Austrian mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel. With the book Incompletezza. Una storia di Kurt Gödel she recounts the figure of the great logician by intertwining it with her own path of personal redemption, in an original combination of essay and narrative that restores the human and intellectual profile of one of the most extraordinary minds of the twentieth century. The book was selected among the twelve finalists for the 2025 Premio Strega.

PIERGIORGIO ODIFREDDI
A mathematician and logician, he was professor of Mathematical Logic at the University of Turin and visiting professor at Italian and international universities. Known for his direct and unfiltered way of asserting the value of scientific thinking against superstition, which earned him the epithet of the “impertinent mathematician”, he is among the most authoritative voices in Italy on the relationship between mathematics, philosophy and science. Author of numerous popular science essays, he dedicated to Gödel the volume with the evocative title The God of Logic.

USEFUL INFORMATION

• It will be possible to book for a maximum of two people. At the end of the form, the screen “You’re almost there!” will appear. At this point, a confirmation email will be sent to each of the two email addresses provided.


• The booking will be valid if and only if it is confirmed and the QR code required for access is received. Until each user has confirmed via the dedicated email, the seat will remain available and bookable.


• If the confirmation is not completed in time, the seat will be reassigned and the user will be placed on the waiting list. It is therefore recommended to complete the entire process as soon as possible to avoid losing the reserved seat.


• Access to the venue with a reservation will be possible from 6.00 PM and is guaranteed until 6.30 PM. After this time, the seat may be reassigned.


• Those on the waiting list may queue in a dedicated lane. Holders of this type of ticket will be allowed access to the venue only if, once all reserved guests have entered, there are still seats available. Entry will be granted in order of arrival.