The Man Who Stole Infinity | Quanta Magazine In an 1874 paper, Georg Cantor proved that there are different sizes of infinity and changed math forever. A trove of newly unearthed letters shows that it was also an act of plagiarism.

The Man Who Stole Infinity

In an 1874 paper, Georg Cantor proved that there are different sizes of infinity and changed math forever. A trove of newly unearthed letters shows that it was also an act of plagiarism. www.quantamagazine.org/the-man-who-... #Cantor #Dedekind #logic #infinity #philsky

Original post on fediscience.org

I have the greatest admiration for the theorems and proofs of transfinite set theory, what we've called Cantor's transfinite set theory.

I taught it for years, wrote restatements for my students, and wrote a piece viewing it in the perspective of historical thinking about the infinite […]

Original post on mastodon.social

The Man Who Stole Infinity, by Joseph Howlett
www.quantamagazine.org/the-man-who-stole-infini...
Demian Goos finally tracked down Dedekind's copies of letters he sent to Cantor, showing that Cantor on at least two occasions published papers on orders of infinity, based in part […]

How the Square Root of 2 Became a Number | Quanta Magazine Useful mathematical concepts, like the number line, can linger for millennia before they are rigorously defined.

“How The Square Root Of 2 Became A Number”, Quanta (www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-squa...).

On HN: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4075...

#Numbers #IrrationalNumbers #Mathematics #Maths #PythagorasTheorem #Dedekind #Cantor #History #Reals #Irrationals