Oskar Becker

Oskar Becker was a German philosopher, logician, mathematician, and historian of mathematics. Born in Leipzig, he initially studied mathematics, completing his dissertation in 1914. After serving in World War I, he turned to philosophy, studying under Edmund Husserl and writing his Habilitationsschrift on the phenomenological foundations of geometry. He served as Husserl's assistant and an editor of the Yearbook for Phenomenological Research. Becker's major work, 'Mathematical Existence' (1927), explored the ontology of mathematical phenomena, applying phenomenological and, controversially, Heideggerian hermeneutic methods. He debated with David Hilbert and Paul Bernays on the role of the potential infinite in formalist metamathematics. Becker also contributed to intuitionistic logic, developing a semantics based on phenomenology, and to modal logic, with his name associated with 'Becker's postulate'. In the history of mathematics, Becker emphasized the 'crisis' in Greek mathematics triggered by the discovery of incommensurability, influencing interpretations of Euclid's work. Later in his career, he distinguished between formal and existential realms, advocating for a 'mantic' phenomenology. Becker maintained extensive correspondence with leading mathematicians and philosophers, much of which was lost during World War II. His later Nazi allegiances may have affected the reception of his work. He died in Bonn in 1964.