Frigyes Riesz and the emergence of general topology. The roots of `topological space' in geometry

DOI10.1007/S00407-014-0144-6MaRDI QIDQ2254170zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Publication date 4 February 2015

Published in Archive for History of Exact Sciences (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-014-0144-6

accumulation points and continuum Cantor's set theory Hilbert's foundations of geometry ICM Rome 1908 point set topology

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

History of mathematics in the 20th century (01A60) History of general topology (54-03) History of manifolds and cell complexes (57-03)

Review text

The Hungarian mathematician Frigyes Riesz (1880--1956) is most famous for the Riesz-Fischer theorem and for his theory of linear operators in functional analysis. This paper deals with another accomplishment, with Riesz' discussion, between 1904 and 1908, of the concept of a mathematical continuum as an abstract set equipped with the notion of an accumulation point. He connected both to Hilbert's appendices (1902/3) of ``Grundlagen der Geometrie [JFM 30.0424.01] of 1899 and to developments in point-set topology in France at the time, particularly by R. Baire and E. Borel. This equal distance to the French and German schools was typical also of Riesz' later work in functional analysis. Riesz' extensive work on general topology is contained in work published in Hungary (both Hungarian and German) in 1906, relies much on Cantor's general theory of cardinal and ordinal numbers, and includes many philosophical deliberations. While this work had limited influence, the author deals mainly with a shortened version presented by Riesz at the ICM in Rome in 1908. While Felix Hausdorff in his ``Grundzüge der Mengenlehre [JFM 45.0123.01] of 1914 did not take notice of Riesz' work at all, its main contribution was in the formulation of the axiom systems of Kuratowski and Sierpinski. The author shows Riesz' close contacts with Hilbert and publishes two German letters by the former to the latter from 1904 and 1907. She does not go much into the personal circumstances of Riesz' work whose dates of life are missing in the paper. The paper is part of the author's unpublished German thesis (2006) on Riesz' contribution to the genesis of the modern concept of abstract spaces.

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