Selecta Mathematica. Vol. 1 (Q4529549)

This is the first of two volumes of selected mathematical papers by Karl Menger (1902--1985). It corresponds roughly to the time from the beginning of Menger's mathematical work -- his first publication dates of 1923 -- until his emigration to the U.S. in 1937, but some later papers have been added. The list of the about 250 titles at the end of the present volume shows that with respect to publications the years from about 1928 to 1937 were Menger's most active ones. The present volume contains about forty of those papers, containing practically all the fundamental and best known of Menger's accomplishments. A selection of the papers had been suggested by Menger himself, shortly after he had participated in the 1964 Graz Congress of the Austrian Mathematical Society (organized by F. Hohenberg and the reviewer). The seven editors, listed in the volume in the order B. Schweizer, A. Sklar, K. Sigmund, P. Gruber, E. Hlawka, L. Reich, and L. Schmetterer, followed Menger's suggestions, but excluded papers that Menger himself had published in his ``Selected Papers in Logic and Foundations, Didactics, Economics'' (Kluwer, 1979; Zbl 0396.01025) and those in the recently reprinted ``Ergebnisse eines Mathematischen Kolloquiums'' (Springer, 1998; Zbl 0917.01024). The volume opens with a fifteen-page historical article ``Karl Menger and Vienna's Golden Autumn'' by \textit{K. Sigmund}, covering Menger's life in the cultural, scientific, and political atmosphere of Vienna from 1860 to 1940, Menger's contact with Hans Hahn, his time as Brouwer's assistant, the publication of his two books (Dimensionstheorie, (Teubner, 1928; JFM 54.0617.03), Kurventheorie (Teubner, 1932; Zbl 0005.41504)), his relations to Gödel and to his own students Nöbeling, Taussky, Wald, etc. The material in the volume is divided into six parts, each being preceded by an English commentary of about ten pages, giving an historical and factual orientation. The parts and their commentators are 1. Dimension Theory (D. M. Johnson) 2. Curve theory and topology (T. Crilly, A. Moran) 3. General metrics (P. Plaumann, K. Strambach) 4. Calculus of variations (H. Sagan\(^\dag\)) 5. Algebra of geometry (W. Benz) 6. Expository papers on geometry (W. Benz). Part 1, the longest (200 pp.) begins with Notes, written when Menger was still a student, inspired by Hahn, left unpublished (and published only later in combined form, in 1929). These Notes concern dimension and curve theories. The next papers deal with connectedness, the Menger-Noebeling embedding theorem, the Universal curve (Menger-Sponge), and the axiomatization of dimension theory. Part 2 consists of five papers on covering theorems, the foundations of the theory of curves, a C. R. Paris Note on Heine-Borel, and a retrospective review of 1981 on the origin of the \(n\)-arc theorem, invited by Harari. Part 3 concerns Menger's ``Investigations on general metric'', consisting of four parts and published in two papers of 1928 and 1930 in the Mathematische Annalen (JFM 54.0622.02 and JFM 56.0508.04), and devoted to convexity in metric spaces, a characterization of \(E^n\) among metric spaces, a theory of \(n\)-dimensional metric (with ideas fully developed in Busemann's \(G\)-spaces, etc.), and metric of curves. Part 4 on the Calculus of Variations contains a few short notes on the connection with metric geometry and involving curves that need not be rectifiable. As Sagan points out, that work was ``too abstract for the engineer'' and no longer timely for the mathematician. Part 5 on the Algebra of Geometry begins with a paper of 1928 in which Menger already had all the lattice-theoretic tools for characterizing \(n\)-dimensional projective geometry, as a forerunner of G. Birkhoff, who in 1935 introduced complemented modular lattices. Menger's paper of 1936 (Zbl 0014.07601) devoted to an axiomatic characterization of finite-dimensional projective spaces is a known highlight of the mathematical literature. Menger was also the first to present a self-dual system of axioms for projective geometry, and three of the selected articles are devoted to several such systems. The expository papers in Part 6 concern point-set methods (results of Menger's 1931 Harvard Seminar), generalized normed spaces (1949), relativity and geometry (1949), Wald and his geometrical work (1952), and implications of some of Mach's ideas (1970), a paper that the commentator calls ``a far-reaching program for the future''. The organization and technical quality of the volume are excellent. The content is so rich that it remains to be seen what will be presented in Volume 2 (Wien: Springer 2003; Zbl 1047.01010).