Set Theory Survival Kit

Abstract

Unlike many other branches of mathematics, where the formulation of ideas and concepts occurs gradually over time and is developed by many mathematicians before it is formalised into a single theory, the formulation of set theory is almost the single-handed creation of one mathematician, namely Georg Cantor.

Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor (1845–1918) was born in Russia to a Danish father and a Russian mother and spent most of his life in Germany. Between the years 1879 and 1884 Cantor published a six-part treatise on set theory (where he introduced some of the fundamental notions of this theory) followed by the publication of a two-part treatise between the years 1895 and 1897 (where he clarified and systematised what he had introduced in his first cycle of publications).