lthmath: lthmath:Richard Dedekind born in 1831 was a German mathematician who made important contrib
lthmath: lthmath: Richard Dedekind born in 1831 was a German mathematician who made important contributions to abstract algebra (particularly ring theory), algebraic number theory and the foundations of the real numbers. He stated that if there existed a one-to-one correspondence between two sets, Dedekind said that the two sets were “similar”. He invoked similarity to give the first precise definition of an infinite set: a set is infinite when it is “similar to a proper part of itself.” (this is similar to what it is done when we study if a set is countable or not) He was a good friend with Cantor and was admiring Cantor’s work on infinite sets. He also came with the idea of an ideal ( he defined an ideal as a subset of a set of numbers, composed of algebraic integers that satisfy polynomial equations with integer coefficients). Celebrating Dedekind’s birthday today ;) -- source link