Nonstandard analysis: its creator and place (Q383351)

The paper consists of three parts. The first one presents a biography of Abraham (Abby) Robinson (1918--1974), best known for his work in model theory, in particular for the development of nonstandard analysis. The second part introduces the reader to basic ideas of Robinson's nonstandard analysis, starting from a basic set-theoretical example of points as models of numbers: whereas distinct positive integers have nonempty intersections, their representations as points are disjoint -- this non-preservation of set-theoric relations makes the model nonstandard. The third part places nonstandard analysis in a broader mathematical context.