Georg Cantor

Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor was a German mathematician. He invented set theory, which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics. Cantor established the importance of onetoone correspondence between the members of two sets, defined infinite and wellordered sets, and proved that the real numbers are more numerous than the natural numbers. In fact, Cantors method of proof of this theorem implies the existence of an infinity of infinities. He defined the cardinal and ordinal numbers and their arithmetic. Cantors work is of great philosophical interest, a fact of which he was well aware.

Georg Cantor was born in the western merchant colony in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and brought up in the city until he was eleven. Georg, the oldest of six children, was regarded as an outstanding violinist. His grandfather Franz Bhm was a wellknown musician and soloist in a Russian imperial orchestra. Cantors father had been a member of the Saint Petersburg stock exchange when he became ill, the family moved to Germany in 1856, first to Wiesbaden then to Frankfurt, seeking winters milder than those of Saint Petersburg. In 1860, Cantor graduated with distinction from the Realschule in Darmstadt his exceptional skills in mathematics, trigonometry in particular, were noted. In 1862, Cantor entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic. After receiving a substantial inheritance upon his fathers death in 1863, Cantor shifted his studies to the University of Berlin, attending lectures by Leopold Kronecker, Karl Weierstrass and Ernst Kummer. He spent the summer of 1866 at the University of Gttingen

Source: Wikipedia