Georg Cantor

One of the most important areas of mathematics that is taught and highly known today was founded by German mathematician Georg Cantor. Between the years 1874 and 1884 was when set theory came to be. Set theory can be known as sets that are collections of objects and any type of object can be collected into a set if it is relevant to mathematics. While making many important contributions to the mathematics world, Cantor discovered the set of real numbers is more numerous than the set of natural numbers, which means there exist infinite and finite sets of different sizes and types. Unfortunately, Cantor was not given the credit for all his studies and work until his final years and after. Cantor retired in 1913 and due to mental illness spent …show more content…
Around the time of 1869 and 1872 Cantor published papers about these subjects and caught the attention of some very important professors at the time. The influence of the Periodic functions by Karl Weierstrass played an important role while developing set theory. Another influence was from a professor at Zurich University, Mr. Richard Dedekind who Cantor looked up to both professors when attending college. Explaining the thoughts behind set theory, Cantor published the papers about it in 1874. The set theory was more like a collection of objects or numbers that share a common feature like all even numbers. Another discovery by Cantor was an infinite set. Cantor said, it is a set that contains a part which is as large as the whole set. Cantor proved that the set of counting numbers even if it was positive whole numbers both odd and even numbers. That it is the same size as the set of the even numbers, which meant that the set of counting numbers is …show more content…
"Georg Cantor." Georg Cantor (2006): 1. MasterFILE Premier. Web. 7 Nov. 2016
"Cantor, Georg." Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia (2016): 1p. 1. Funk & Wagnalls New World Encyclopedia. Web. 8 Nov.