Hausdorff's work in measure theory (Q1811219)

The work under review may be considered as an introduction to the author's commentaries on Hausdorff's work in measure theory published in F. Hausdorff: Gesammelte Werke, Band IV, Berlin etc.: Springer-Verlag, 11--18, 44--54 (2001; Zbl 0980.01026). -- The paper contains a short biography of Felix Hausdorff (1862--1942) and a general survey on Hausdorff's mathematical work. There exist only two published papers on measure theory from Hausdorff's pen: His famous proof of the unsolvability of the finitely additive measure problem in \(\mathbb R^n\) for \(n\geq 3\) and his equally famous paper on dimension and exterior measure. The author puts these works into historical perspective, explains their contents and their influence on subsequent developments. A highlight of the present work is the publication of a new proof from Hausdorff's literary bequest of the nonexistence of a nontrivial finitely additive finite rotationally invariant measure which is defined on all subsets of the unit sphere in \(\mathbb R^3\).