- Mount Vernon is the county seat of and the most populous city in Skagit County, Washington, United States. A central location in the Skagit River Valley, the city is located 51 miles (82 km) south of the Canadian border and 60 miles (97 km) north of Seattle. The population was 35,219 at the 2020 census, making it the 35th most-populous city in Washington, with 62,966 people living in its urban area. It is one of two principal cities of and included in the Mount Vernon-Anacortes Metropolitan Statistical Area, covering most of Skagit County.
- Kurt Gödel (plato.standford.edu)
Kurt Friedrich Gödel (b. 1906, d. 1978) was one of the principal founders of the modern, metamathematical era in mathematical logic. He is widely known for his Incompleteness Theorems, which are among the handful of landmark theorems in twentieth century mathematics, but his work touched every field of mathematical logic, if it was not in most cases their original stimulus. In his philosophical work Gödel formulated and defended mathematical Platonism, the view that mathematics is a descriptive science, or alternatively the view that the concept of mathematical truth is objective. On the basis of that viewpoint he laid the foundation for the program of conceptual analysis within set theory (see below). He adhered to Hilbert’s “original rationalistic conception” in mathematics (as he called it); and he was prophetic in anticipating and emphasizing the importance of large cardinals in set theory before their importance became clear.