THEJOURNAL SYMBOLIC OF LOGIC Volume 43, Number 3, Sept.

1978

STEPHEN C. KLEENEZ

Godel has called to my attention that p. 773 is misleading in regard to the discovery of the finite axiomatization and its place in his proof of the consistency of GCH. For the version in [1940], as he says on p. 1, "The system Z of axioms for set theory which we adopt [a finite one] . . . is essentially due to P. Bernays . . .".3 However, it is not at all necessary to use a finite axiom system. Godel considers the more suggestive proof to be the one in [1939], which uses infinitely many axiom^.^ His main achievement regarding the consistency of GCH, he says, really is that he first introduced the concept of constructible sets into set theory defining it as in [1939], proved that the axioms of set theory (including the axiom of choice) hold for it, and conjectured that the continuum hypothesis also will hold. H e told these things to von Neumann during his stay at Princeton in 1935. The discovery of the proof of this conjecture on the basis of his definition is not too difficult. Godel gave the proof (also for GCH) not until three years later because he had fallen ill in the meantime. This proof was using a submodel of the constructible sets in the lowest case countable, similar to the one commonly given today. Regarding the top of p. 763: When Godel wrote his completeness paper [1930], he did not know of Skolem's work [1922], which was not mentioned in Hilbert-Ackermann [1928]. Corresponding to pp. 764-767: The proof in Godel's undecidability paper [I9311 may be thought rather awkward. But the explanation lies in the fact that it is completely f ~ r m a l i z e d . ~
Received August 1, 1977.

' STEPHEN KLEENE,The work of Kurt Godel, this JOURNAL, 41 (1976), pp. 761-778. C. vol.
Errata: p. 761, line 4 of text, for "of" read "on"; p. 769, line 8, for "[1936]" read "[1943IM. Supported by NSF Grant MCS76-06541. VAUL BERNAYS, system of axiomatic set theory-Part I, this JOURNAL, 2 (1937), pp. A vol. 65-77. The error on p. 773 lines 19-20 is not original with me. In 1975, instead of rereading [I9401 from which I learned the subject, or better reading [1939], I'used material I had just taught in class from a text by a set-theorist which states, incorrectly, "Godel was the first to realize that the Comprehension Schema can be replaced by a finite number of its instances . . .". Godel has discussed extensively the conceptual framework of his work in letters and personal communications published in pp. 9-12, 84-86, 186, 189-190, 324-326 of HAO WANG, From rnafhernafics to philosophy, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, Humanities Press, New York, 1974, xiv + 428 pp. Also comments by Godel are in Davis [1965], van Heijenoort [I9671 and ABRAHAM ROBINSON,. Non-standard analysis, 2nd ed., North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1974, xii + 293 pp.
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

O 1978, Association for Symbolic Logic