Oskar Becker - Contacts and Correspondence

Contacts and Correspondence

Becker carried on an extensive correspondence with some of the greatest mathematicians and philosophers of the day. These included Ackermann, Adolf Fraenkel (later Abraham), Arend Heyting, David Hilbert, John von Neumann, Hermann Weyl, and Ernst Zermelo among mathematicians, as well as Hans Reichenbach and Felix Kaufmann among philosophers. The letters that Becker received from these major figures of twentieth century mathematics and leading logical positivist philosophers, as well as Becker’s own copies of his letters to them, were destroyed during WWII.

Becker's correspondence with Weyl has been reconstructed (see bibliography), as Weyl's copies of Becker’s letters to him are preserved, and Becker often extensively quotes or paraphrases Weyl’s own letters. Perhaps the same can be done with some other parts of this valuable but lost correspondence. Weyl entered into correspondence with Becker with high hopes and expectations, given their mutual admiration for Husserl’s phenomenology and Husserl’s great admiration for the work of Becker. However, Weyl, whose sympathies were with contructivism and intuitionism, lost patience when he argued with Becker about a purported intuition of the infinite defended by Becker. Weyl concluded, sourly, that Becker would discredit phenomenological approaches to mathematics if he persisted in this position.