Reference for Hilbert numbers

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I've been studying a little bit of number theory, and during such studies I came across this interesting reference to Hilbert numbers, that is, numbers of the form $4n +1$. My question is a purely historical one: since they are called Hilbert numbers, I presume that Hilbert was one of the first to characterize this number series. However, I haven't been able to track down in which work, specifically, Hilbert does this, nor what was his original interest in so doing. Does any have any clue about this?