ABSTRACT
Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philip Cantor (1845–1918) was born in Russia, and educated in Germany, studying with Weierstrass and Kronecker. Most of his career was spent at the University of Halle. Cantor (along with Dedekind, Méray, Weierstrass, and Heine) established the foundations of analysis—the rigorous specification of the real number system—Dedekind using “cuts”, Cantor using “fundamental sequences”. C. B. Boyer [8], p. 560 calls this important development “the arithmetization of analysis”. Cantor founded a new field—set theory—virtually single-handedly. His work on infinite sets was controversial at the time; but today the points of view considered controversial are those opposed to Cantor’s. A discussion of Cantor’s scientific work is contained in the book by J. W. Dauben [10]. Two of Dunham’s twelve"great theorems" are results of Cantor [11]. A romantic’s view of his life is in Men of Mathematics [7].
