David Hilbert was born on 23 January 1862 in Königsburg, Prussia. He received a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Königsburg in 1885 and afterwards remained at the university as a lecturer. In 1895 Hilbert moved to the University of Göttingen, one of the premier centers of mathematical research in the world, where he remained for the rest of his life. He died on 14 February 1943 in Göttingen.
Hilbert was one of the most important and influential mathematicians of the 19th and 20th centuries. He made fundamental contributions in geometry, functional analysis, and mathematical physics. Perhaps more importantly, Hilbert promoted the formal, rigorous, axiomatic approach to mathematics that has dominated the subject ever since. In 1900, at the International Congress of Mathematics in Paris, he presented a list of 23 unsolved problems in mathematics. These problems have greatly influenced the course of mathematical research to this day.
Although he did not work in probability, Hilbert's contributions in functional analysis are of fundamental importance in the subject, as they are in many other areas of mathematics.