(March 3, 1845 – January 6, 1918)
Georg Cantor’s expertise was honed by Karl Weierstrass, and by Ernst Kummer who supervised his doctorate. Before inventing his Set Theory, he worked on Number Theory and Analysis. In fact, his first 10 treatises were entirely on Number Theory. Eduard Heine (the grand wizard of Spherical Harmonics and Uniform Continuity) noticed his aptness and urged him to tackle the persistent encumbrance of Uniqueness of the Representation of a Function by Trigonometric Series. Masterminds like Bernhard Riemann, Peter Dirichlet and Rudolf Lipschitz have tried and failed to solve this problem. It stumped Professor Heine too, but Cantor solved it: resulting in his discovery of Transfinite Ordinals. He followed-up by publishing elaborate treatises on both Trigonometric Series and Irrational Numbers, before assembling them into his Set Theory masterpiece. In setting this stage, Cantor first defined Cardinal Numbers, Ordinal Numbers, prior to unveiling the Theory of Transfinite Numbers. His Set Theory treatise (titled: On a Property of the Collection of All Real Algebraic Numbers) conclusively proved that more than one kind of infinity exist, before establishing a prudent way of deducing Transcendental Numbers. This damascene conversion was such that it prompted criticisms from mathematicians (such as Henri Poincare, Hermann Weyl, Leopold Kronecker, Luitzen Brouwer, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Émile Borel; until David Hilbert, Richard Dedekind, Felix Hausdorff, Kurt Goedel and Ernst Zermelo gave Cantor unwavering supports). For his masterstrokes, the London Royal Society awarded Cantor their grandest mathematical garland (the Sylvester Medal). He is also the eponym of the 76-kilometer-wide Cantor lunar crater.
All rights reserved. © Valentine Oduenyi
Cantor was truly great. What he discovered took Poincare, Weyl, Brouwer, Kronecker and many others a long time to understand.
Very well-written
Georg Cantor is up there with the greatest minds. I love this blog.
Everything is easy to understand. Thanks
Without unnecessary bla-bla-bla, this blog is straight to the point. Exactly how I like them.
I have visited this site first time and now gonna be a regular visitor, keep up good work.
Bravissimo!
Very good
He was among the real-deals of his time!
He basically SET the THEORY
I like what David Hilbert said about Cantor’s Set Theory.
Like!! Great article post. Really thank you! Really Cool.
Cantor published something which Poincare didn’t understand.
You don’t see that every day.
Awesome! I’ve bookmarked your site.
I wish more blogs are well-written like this.
He did something spectacular, and I never stop wondering why some other great mathematicians didn’t understand him.
So sad how unfairly he was criticized!
He was first criticized, but vindicated at last. So sweet! 😀
Good points here!
He had a rare vision into mathematics.
Yes, it seemed like Georg Cantor had a bit of those rare visions Leonhard Euler always had after losing his sight.
Excellent!
Well-supported by research and data.
Salute to the great founder of Set Theory
Good to find somebody with some original thoughts on this subject. This blog is something that is needed on the web.
Brains at crossroads
His Set Theory is fantastic.
Masterful in words and in deeds