Georg Cantor
Mathematician, Academic
1845 – 1918
Who was Georg Cantor?
Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor was a German mathematician, best known as the inventor of set theory, which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics. Cantor established the importance of one-to-one correspondence between the members of two sets, defined infinite and well-ordered sets, and proved that the real numbers are "more numerous" than the natural numbers. In fact, Cantor's method of proof of this theorem implies the existence of an "infinity of infinities". He defined the cardinal and ordinal numbers and their arithmetic. Cantor's work is of great philosophical interest, a fact of which he was well aware.
Cantor's theory of transfinite numbers was originally regarded as so counter-intuitive – even shocking – that it encountered resistance from mathematical contemporaries such as Leopold Kronecker and Henri Poincaré and later from Hermann Weyl and L. E. J. Brouwer, while Ludwig Wittgenstein raised philosophical objections.
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- Born
- Mar 3, 1845
Saint Petersburg - Also known as
- 格奥尔格·康托尔
- Кантор, Георг
- Religion
- Lutheranism
- Nationality
- Germany
- German Empire
- Russian Empire
- Profession
- Education
- ETH Zurich
- Humboldt University of Berlin
- Lived in
- Russia
- Saint Petersburg
- Russian Empire
- Died
- Jan 6, 1918
Halle
Submitted
on July 23, 2013
Citation
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"Georg Cantor." Biographies.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 Apr. 2024. <https://www.biographies.net/people/en/georg_cantor>.
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