[AN] K.P. Hart: 150 years of uncountability of R

05 December 2023 15:45 till 16:45 - Location: Chip (36.HB.01.600) | Add to my calendar

On the 29th of November 1873 Georg Cantor wrote a letter to Dedekind with the question whether, in modern terms, there is a bijection between the set \(N\) of natural numbers and the interval \((0,\infty)\). Eight days later, on the 7th of December 1873 Cantor wrote a letter with a proof that no such bijection exists.

This year we celebrate the 150th birthday of that proof.

In this talk I will discuss the content of these and other letters from Cantor to Dedekind about this problem and related questions and we shall see how Cantor set his first steps on the path of Set Theory.