The development of the concept of uniform convergence in Karl Weierstrass's lectures and publications between 1861 and 1886 (Q2040449)

The author analyses the development of the concept of uniform convergence by Karl Weierstrass. He points out that Weierstrass's contributions to that topic formed an independent branch of development that is disconnected from the approaches of Cauchy, Seidel, Stokes and Björling. Starting with a sketch of Gudermann's handling of the concept of convergence he then analyses the different formulations of uniform convergence given by Weierstrass. This discussion is based on lecture notes of Weierstrass's lectures held between 1861 and the mid-1880s, as well as some of his publications. Especially, the author stresses that the often quoted, well-known article ``Zur Theorie der Potenzreihen'', published in Weierstrass's ``Mathematische Werke'' [JFM 25.0049.01] is a revised version. He verifies this statement by some arguments. As a consequence Weierstrass's first introduction of uniform convergence has to be redated, the date 1841 suggested by Weierstrass's dating of the article is not correct.