We are excited to share that Associate Professor Vera Fischer and her team have been awarded the prestigious FWF Emerging Fields award for their project “Uncovering the Axioms of Mathematics.” The grant provides €7 million over five years to pursue ambitious, high-risk, high-gain research exploring the very foundations of the natural sciences through the lens of mathematics, computer science, and philosophy. Congratulations to Vera and her fantastic team — Georg, Juan, Laura, Michael, and Sandra — on this remarkable achievement!

The principal investigators of this project are Juan P. Aguilera (coordination, TU Wien), Vera Fischer (U Wien), Laura Kovacs (TU Wien), Sandra Müller (TU Wien), Michael Pinsker (TU Wien), and Georg Schiemer (U Wien, Institute Vienna Circle). 

The project “Uncovering the Axioms of Mathematics” is an interdisciplinary research project that unites mathematics, computer science, and philosophy to answer one of the most fundamental questions in science: What should the rules of mathematics be? A century ago, the Vienna Circle, a group of leading intellectuals from the fields of philosophy and natural sciences, explored this very question. Their work culminated in Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, one of the most significant achievements in the foundations of science. These theorems demonstrate that there are questions that cannot be answered using the known rules of mathematics. In this Emerging Fields project, researchers will examine the phenomenon of incompleteness from a modern perspective, taking into account contemporary developments such as computers and artificial intelligence. The goal is to uncover the axioms of mathematics.

“Axioms are the fundamental rules of mathematics – and thus its most important component. They are, in a sense, the atoms of the universe or the bits of a computer: the elementary building blocks from which everything arises. In this sense, axioms are the DNA of mathematics, which we want to understand even better,” said Juan P. Aguilera, coordinator of the project.

(The description of the project is a translation of the official announcement by the FWF.)