A.V. Arkhangel'skii - Böcker

One service mathematics has rendered the 'Et moi, "0' si j'avait su oomment en revenir. human race. It has put common sense back je n'y serais point aile:' Jules Verne where it belongs. on the topmost shelf next to the dusty canister labelled 'discarded n- sense'. The series is divergent; therefore we may be able to do something with it. Eric T. Bell O. Heaviside Mathematics is a tool for thought. A highly necessary tool in a world where both feedback and non- linearities abound. Similarly, all kinds of parts of mathematics serve as tools for other parts and for other sciences. Applying a simple rewriting rule to the quote on the right above one finds such statements as: 'One service topology has rendered mathematical physics ...'; 'One service logic has rendered com- puter science ...'; 'One service category theory has rendered mathematics ...'. All arguably true. And all statements obtainable this way form part of the raison d'el:re of this series.

General topology is the domain ofmathematics devoted to the investigation of the concepts of continuity and passage to a limit at their natural level of generality. The most basic concepts of general topology, that of a topological space and a continuous map, were introduced by Hausdorffin 1914. Oneofthecentralproblemsoftopologyisthedeterminationandinvestigation of topological invariants; that is, properties ofspaces which are preserved under homeomorphisms. Topological invariants need not be numbers. Connectedness, compactness, andmetrizability,forexample,arenon-numericaltopologicalinvariants.Dimen- sional invariants, on the otherhand, areexamplesofnumericalinvariants which take integervalues on specific topological spaces. Part II ofthis book is devoted to them. Topological invariants which take values in the cardinal numbers play an especially important role, providing the raw material for many useful coin" putations. Weight, density, character, and Suslin number are invariants ofthis type. Certain classes of topological spaces are defined in terms of topological in- variants.Particularly important examples include the metrizable spaces, spaces with a countable base, compact spaces, Tikhonov spaces, Polish spaces, Cech- complete spaces and the symmetrizable spaces.