If you want a deep dive on Göttingen, Constance Reid's biography of Hilbert is great.<p>Fun fact: Hilbert was born in Königsberg, a port city on the Baltic with a famous set of 7 bridges, and as part of the WWII peace settlement between the allies, Russia got it. But not without some interest stipulations.<p>Königsberg is now Kaliningrad, in the Kaliningrad Oblast, a geographically separated province of Russia. In order for Russia to regain direct access to the Kalingrad port (Königsberg), Russia would have to invade either Lithuania or Poland. And if you look at the borders, it's pretty clear they were designed as a lock: a straight shot from the nearest point in Russia would go through Lithuania, then Poland, and Lithuania again.<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hilbert-Constance-Reid/dp/0387946748/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Hilbert-Constance-Reid/dp/0387946748/</a>
There was also a talk in 1920 about universal computation 16 years before Turing:<p><a href="https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/12/where-did-combinators-come-from-hunting-the-story-of-moses-schonfinkel/" rel="nofollow">https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/12/where-did-combin...</a>