But this book is more than a love story, told in retrospect and with nostalgia, by an old lady on the verge of death. The rise of Nazism that grows into exile the German scientists, their installation in an America they discover the incredible intellectual soil that was Princeton, where we crossed Einstein, Oppenheimer, Pauli, von Neumann ... paranoia of McCarthyism, all these historical elements contribute to elegantly support the sentimental frame of the book.
Besides a lovely evocation of humor of Einstein, one will also find a healthy scratch from those who, even then, sought to seize the Gödel incompleteness theorem to make it say, in the areas of sociology or psychanayse for example, more than he said.
But it is not a biography in the strict sense, and many secondary characters are invented by the author. Systematic alternating chapters where meet two degrees of narrative (the story of a young woman trying to coax the cantankerous widow Gödel, and the memories it tells him) may annoy, but we made it . The book (451 pages) is probably a bit too long, but it is nicely written. The mathematical explanations, not very detailed, are accessible to novice and interesting. We leave this reading with great affection for the hard life that Ms. Gödel seems to have crossed, and admiration, pity mingled for her strange husband.
One last quote in conclusion: "There are 10 kinds of people Those who understand binary and others..."