Derived length for arbitrary topological spaces (Q1187588)

Summary: The notion of derived length is as old as that of ordinal numbers itself. It is also known as the Cantor-Bendixson length. It is defined only for dispersed (that is scattered) spaces. In this paper this notion has been extended in a natural way for all topological spaces such that all its pleasing properties are retained. In this process we solve a problem posed by \textit{V. Kannan} [Ordinal invariants in topology, Mem. Am. Math. Soc. 245 (1981; Zbl 0473.54001), p. 158].