Selecta Mathematica. Vol. 2

For the review of Vol. 1 (2002) see Zbl 1027.01021. This second of the two volumes of selected mathematical papers by Karl Menger (1902--1985) contains mostly papers published after 1937, the year in which Menger emigrated from Austria to the U.S. Exceptions are a DMV-Bericht of 1928 on `ramification sets' (being Menger's generalization of Suslin's analytic sets), an MZ-paper of 1931 on distance in groups (being an offshoot of Menger's seminal investigation on general metric of 1928), and two obituaries, one for Otto Schreier and the other for his teacher Hans Hahn. It was mentioned in the review of Vol. 1 that, on the other hand, a number of papers that Menger published after 1937 had already been included in that first volume. The arrangement and layout of the material in the present volume follows the principle used in Vol. 1. This resulted in a division into ten parts, varying in length between twenty and 200 pages, approximately. Just as in Vol. 1, each part opens with an English commentary, giving a general orientation about the material presented and its historical background relating to Menger's life and work. These parts (as numbered by the reviewer) and their commentators are as follows. 1. Logic and Foundations (D. van Dalen), 2. Analysis (L. Reich), 3. Length (L. Senechal), 4. Algebra of Analysis (A. Sklar, H. Kaiser), 5. Didactics, Variables, and Fluents (B. Schweizer, A. Sklar), 6. Probabilistic Geometry (B. Schweizer), 7. Group Theory and Algebra (H. Lausch), 8. Sociology (R. Leonard), 9. Economics (K. Sigmund), 10. Miscellaneous (One-page comment without name). Part 1 is the shortest, consisting of the single DMV-Bericht already mentioned, that was inspired by Brouwer's intuitionism. Part 2 contains Menger's paper on Weierstrass analytic functions [Math. Ann. 167, 177--194 (1966; Zbl 0147.32702)], Menger's approach to complex analysis in terms of ``pure geometry), and several notes (C. R., Proc. Natl. Acad. USA, etc.) from the time of 1935 to 1965. Part 3 centers around the idea of length of a path in a metric space, which Menger treated with increasing generality, as the given five notes of 5--10 pp. from the time of 1940 to 1952 and the further references document. Part 4 is the longest in this volume. It is preceded by two commentaries, the first on the algebra of analysis and the second on the influence of Mengers' ideas on Nöbauer and his school. Menger's papers included are from the Notre Dame Colloquium of 1944--1946. They are followed by five substantial papers of 1959 to 1966. The papers in Part 5 owe their motivation and origin mainly to Menger's teaching of calculus at Notre Dame and the IIT in Chicago. They constitute a representative sample of Menger's work in the interrelated areas of calculus, variables, and fluents, to which Menger contributed actively for over two decades. The material presented here includes twenty-five pages from Menger's Calculus -- A Modern Approach (Boston: Ginn, 1955; Zbl 0065.03302) as well as a paper from the Third Berkeley Symposium on Mathematical Statistics and Probability (1954--55; Zbl 0073.12204), the paper being on random variables from the viewpoint of a general theory of variables. This marks the transition to Part 6 on probabilistic geometry and statistical metrics, represented here by four of Menger's C. R. and Natl. Acad. Notes (1942--51). Part 7 consists of the paper on metric on groups mentioned above [Math. Z. 33, 396--418 (1931; Zbl 0001.05501)] and a C.R. note of 1952 on a general axiomatics of determinants, with the aim of a self-dual foundation of the theory of determinants. The two papers in Part 8, one of 1938 and the other of 1983, had their roots in Menger's time at Vienna, and Menger's model was later recognized as one of the earliest mathematically rigorous models of a social situation. It is documented (on p. 499 of the book under review) that Menger influenced with his ideas the application of game theory to economics in the sense of von Neumann-Morgenstern. Part 9 consists of a single paper on Austrian marginalism and mathematical economics from a collection of papers in honor of his father Carl Menger published in 1973 by Oxford Press. The last part of the book, entitled Miscellaneous, consists of the obituaries mentioned, an article on Moritz Schlick, introductions to Ernst Mach's \textit{The Science of Mechanics} and Hans Hahn's \textit{Empiricism, Logic and Mathematics} and, finally, a delightful forty-page booklet \textit{You Will Like Geometry}, written by Menger for an exhibition of 1952 in Chicago. The organization of the volume, again showing the great experience and devotion of the editors, and its technical quality are excellent. Its rich and diverse content make it a valuable companion of Vol. 1, which had appeared a year earlier.

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