Hilbert’s program is, in the first instance, a proposal and a research program in the philosophy and foundations of mathematics. It was formulated in the early 1920s by German mathematician David Hilbert (1862–1943), and was pursued by him and his collaborators at the University of Göttingen and elsewhere in the 1920s

Abstract. The Hydra was a many-headed monster from Greek mythology that would immediately replace a head that was cut off by one or two new heads. It was the second task of Hercules to kill this monster. In an abstract sense, a Hydra can be modeled as a tree where the leaves are the heads, and when a head is cut off some subtrees get duplicated. Different Hydra species differ by which subtress can be duplicated in which multiplicity. Using some deep mathematics, it had been shown that two classes of Hydra species must always die, independent of the order in which heads are cut off. In this paper we identify three properties for a Hydra that are necessary and sufficient to make it immortal or force it to die. We also give a simple combinatorial proof for this classification. Now, if Hercules had known this... 1