LIFE OF GEORGE CANTOR AND HIS CONTRIBUTIONS

Subject: EdM107 (HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS)

Lesson Title: Life of Georg Cantor and His Contributions to Mathematics

Presenter: Nizza Lyn T. Lantingan

I. GEORG CANTOR’S EARLY LIFE

• Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor, also known

as Georg Cantor was a Russian-born mathematician.
George can be considered the founder of set theory and
introduced the concept of infinite numbers with his
discovery of cardinal numbers. He also advanced the
study of trigonometric series.
• Georg Cantor, was born March 3, 1845, in Saint
Petersburg, Russian Empire, and died at the age of 72
years old on January 6, 1918, at Halle, Province of
Saxony, German Empire.
• Cantor’s parents were Danish. His artistic mother, a
Roman Catholic, came from a family of musicians, and
his father, a Protestant, was a prosperous merchant.
• Georg Cantor’s talent mathematics began to show
off at the age of fifteen when he was in a gymnasium. His
father wanted him to be an engineer but he didn’t like it as he liked mathematics;
he lacked the courage to tell his father about his interest in mathematics.

• Before joining the college, he requested his father to allow him to pursue
mathematics and he accepted. He joined the University of Zurich in 1862 and
transferred the next year after the death of his father to the University of Berlin
where he studied mathematics, philosophy and physics.
• He spent the summer of 1866 at the University of Göttingen, then and later a center
for mathematical research. In 1867, Cantor completed his dissertation in number
theory with the title “De aequationibus secundi gradus indeterminatis“, under the
supervision of Eduard Kummer and Karl Weierstrass, at the University of Berlin.
• Cantor first taught at a girl’s school in Berlin and in 1868, he joined the Schellbach
Seminar for mathematics teachers. During this time he worked on his habilitation
and, immediately after being appointed to Halle in 1869, where he spent his entire
career, he presented his thesis, again on number theory, and received his
habilitation. In 1872 Cantor was promoted to Extraordinary Professor at Halle and
1879 became Full Professor.
• In 1867 he was awarded a doctorate but he did not get a good job and forced to
work as an unpaid lecture and later as an assistant professor at the Backwater
University of Halle. He got married to Valley Guttman in 1874 and had six children
his last born in1888.
• In 1884, Georg encountered his first bout of depression; criticism of his work
weighed on his mind. After this, he suffered from mental illness and was a victim
of continuous breakdowns. He was finally admitted to a sanatorium.
• Cantor retired in 1913 and spent his final years ill with little food because of the
war conditions in Germany. In June 1917 he entered a sanatorium for the last time
and continually wrote to his wife asking to be allowed to go home. He died of a
heart attack a few days after being discharged from the sanatorium.

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 LIFE OF GEORGE CANTOR AND HIS CONTRIBUTIONS

II. CONTRIBUTION OF GEORGE CANTOR

• During his life Georg Cantor proved several concepts in mathematics that other
mathematicians ahead of him were unable to prove. Cantor was encouraged by
his friend at Halle who was working on trigonometric series to work on the
uniqueness of infinite series. In 1873 he was able to prove that rational numbers
are countable, he added that algebraic numbers that are roots, squares and square
roots of polynomial equation with integer coefficients are countable. He published
his first paper on theory of sets in 1874 where he proved that the set of integers
had an equal number of members.
• He also came up with the argument that real numbers are not countable which
he proved, he said that transcendental numbers are irrational numbers that are
not root, square or square root of any polynomial equation having integer
coefficients. Georg was able to show that the interval between zero and one is
uncountable. He is the only mathematician who was able to show that almost all
numbers are transcendental by proving that real numbers are not countable while
proving that algebraic numbers were countable, he also showed that the set of all
subsets of a given set are larger than the original set. The introduction of the
concept of the first derived set was his initiative. Cantor also showed that union
of two countable sets should also be countable and brought across the existence
of uncountable numbers.
• Georg Cantor was the first person to discuss the continuum hypothesis which
states that there exists a set of numbers whose power is greater than that of the
naturals and less than that of real, he tried it but all was in vain as he was able to
prove and disprove it. Golden and Paul Cohen in 1963 said that the hypothesis
can be proved or disproved.
THE ORIGIN’S OF SET THEORY

Cantor’s work between 1874 and 1884 is the origin of set theory. Cantor and his friend
Richard Dedekind both believe that the finite or infinite, is a collection of objects (e.g., the integers,
{0, ±1, ±2,…}) that share a particular property while each object retains its own individuality. But
when Cantor applied the device of the one-to-one correspondence (e.g., {a, b, c} to {1, 2, 3}) to
study the characteristics of sets, he quickly saw that they differed in the extent of their
membership, even among infinite sets. (A set is infinite if one of its parts, or subsets, has as many
objects as itself.) His method soon produced surprising results.

Prior to this work, the concept of a set was a rather elementary one that had been used
implicitly since the beginnings of mathematics, dating back to the ideas of Aristotle. No one had
realized that set theory had any nontrivial content. Before Cantor, there were only finite sets,
which are easy to understand, and “the infinite”, which was considered a topic for philosophical,
rather than mathematical, discussion. Cantor succeeded in proving that there are many possible
sizes for infinite sets – even infinitely many. Thereby, he established that set theory was anything
else but trivial, and that it needed to be studied. In the course of this study, set theory has become
a foundational theory in modern mathematics, in the sense that it interprets propositions about
mathematical objects from all areas of mathematics in a single theory, and provides a standard
set of axioms to prove or disprove them.

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 LIFE OF GEORGE CANTOR AND HIS CONTRIBUTIONS

THE RATIONAL NUMBERS ARE COUNTABLE

The beginning of set theory as a branch of mathematics is often marked by the publication
of Cantor’s 1874 paper, “Ueber eine Eigenschaft des Inbegriffes aller reellen algebraischen
Zahlen” (“On a Property of the Collection of All Real Algebraic Numbers”). This paper was the first
to provide a rigorous proof that there was more than one kind of infinity. A first step towards
Cantor’s set theory already was his 1873 proof that the rational numbers are countable, i.e. they
may be placed in one-one correspondence with the natural numbers – and therefore their count
is equal. However, when he tried to extend his proof to real numbers, he was facing difficulties.
To decide whether the real numbers were countable proved much harder. But in December 1873
he succeeded with the counter argument and proved that the real numbers were not countable.
Cantor proved that the collection of real numbers and the collection of positive integers are not
equinumerous, i.e. having the same number of elements.

THE DIAGONAL ARGUMENT

In 1891, he published a paper containing his elegant “diagonal argument” for the existence
of an uncountable set. He applied the same idea to prove Cantor’s theorem: the cardinality of the
power set of a set A is strictly larger than the cardinality of A. This established the richness of the
hierarchy of infinite sets, and of the cardinal and ordinal arithmetic that Cantor had defined. His
argument is fundamental in the solution of the Halting problem and the proof of Gödel‘s first
incompleteness theorem.

THE CONTINUUM HYPOTHESIS

ℵ1 = 2ℵ0
The continuum hypothesis posited that there were no infinities between ℵ0 and ℵ1. That is, there is
no set whose cardinality is between that of the counting numbers and the real numbers.

Also related with the problem of infinite sets is the famous continuum hypothesis – There is no
set whose cardinality is strictly between that of the integers and the real numbers – introduced by
Cantor in 1878. Despite George's efforts to prove the continuum hypothesis, he had no luck in
doing so. That's because it can't be proven. That was shown by two 20th century mathematicians.
In 1940, Kurt Godel showed the continuum hypothesis cannot be disproven with the set theory
axioms. Then in 1963 Paul Cohen proved it can't be proven either.

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III. OTHER CONTRIBUTION OF GEORG CANTOR

Georg Cantor Books

a. The Continuum, and Other Types of Serial Order: With an Introduction to

Cantor’s Transfinite Numbers.
b. La théorie Bacon-Shakespeare: le drame subjectif d’un savant.Adrenomedullin in
Cardiovascular Disease.
c. Contributions to the Founding of the Theory of Transfinite Numbers.
d. The Continuum – Scholar’s Choice Edition.

Cantor proposed two important concepts

a. The Topology
b. The Relationship of topology with its cardinality.

REFERENCES:

https://vedicmathschool.org/georg-cantor/

https://studycorgi.com/georg-cantors-life-and-contributions-to-math/

https://www.britannica.com/science/continuum-hypothesis

https://totallyhistory.com/georg-cantor/

https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/mathematics/georg-cantor-the-man-who-
discovered-different-infinities/

http://scihi.org/georg-cantor-set-theory-infinity/

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