Sur Les Fondements de la Theorie Des Ensembles Transfinis.
Paris: Librairie Scientifique A. Hermann, 1899. First edition in volume form. Half leather. This is the first volume publication of Georg Cantor’s landmark work, published in French in 1899. This copy is finely bound and in fine condition. The binding features half orange-brown Morocco goatskin with marbled paper-covered boards. The contents are bound with red and yellow head and foot bands. The binding is immaculate, showing no wear, toning, or soiling. The contents are clean, with no soiling, spotting, or previous ownership marks.
Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philip Cantor (1845-1918), born in St. Petersburg to Danish parents, was a mathematician who was the founder of set theory. After studying in Switzerland, he moved to the University of Berlin, where he earned a doctorate in number theory in 1867, dealing with a question that Gauss had left unsettled in 1801. He spent almost the entirety of his career at the University of Halle, where he became a professor at the age of 34. His work on infinite sets and their cardinalities eventually introduced the first meaningful concept of transfinite numbers, first published in the German publication Mathematische Annalen in two articles in 1895 and 1897, and first published in volume form here in French in 1899.
The opposition Cantor faced and the length of time before his ideas were fully assimilated unfortunately coincided with his descent into mental illness. He was hospitalized in 1884. In 1899, the year this volume was published, he entered a sanitorium. Within a few years, hospitalizations began occurring at intervals of every few years. Though he continued to work in mathematics, he eventually died in a sanitorium. Item #007737
Price: $2,400.00