Robert André – författare

Contemporary students of mathematics differ considerably from those of half a century ago. In spite of this, many textbooks written decades ago, and now considered to be “classics”, are still prescribed for students today. These texts are not suitable for today’s students. This text is meant for and written to today’s mathematics students. Set theory is a pure mathematics endeavor in the sense that it seems to have no immediate applications; yet the knowledge and skills developed in such a course can easily branch out to various fields of both pure mathematics and applied mathematics.Rather than transforming the reader into a practicing mathematician, this book is more designed to initiate the reader to what may be called “mathematical thinking” while developing knowledge about foundations of modern mathematics. Without this insight, becoming a practicing mathematician is much more daunting.The main objective is twofold. The students will develop some fundamental understanding of the foundations of mathematics and elements of set theory, in general. In the process, the student will develop skills in proving simple mathematical statements with “mathematical rigor”.Carefully presented detailed proofs and rigorous chains of logical arguments will guide the students from the fundamental ZFC-axioms and definitions to show why a basic mathematical statement must hold true. The student will recognize the role played by each fundamental axiom in development of modern mathematics. The student will learn to distinguish between a correct mathematical proof and an erroneous one. The subject matter is presented while bypassing the complexities encountered when using formal logic.

This textbook can be used as introduction to a general topology course at undergraduate and graduate level courses. However, many parts of this book present topological concepts that apply directly to functional analysis, which will be of interest to scholars working in those fields.In Part I, readers are eased into the main subject matter of general topology, being presented with summaries of normed vector spaces and metric spaces. Parts II to VI form the core material contained in most Basic General Topology courses. After having worked through the most fundamental concepts of topology, the reader will be exposed to brief introductions to more specialized or advanced topics of pointset topology. These are presented in Part VII in the form of a sequence of chapters, many of which can be read or studied independently or in short sequences of two or three chapters, provided that the student has mastered the previous sections.Chapters related to the more basic ideas of general topology are followed by a collection of 'concept review' questions, the answers to which are found in the main body of the text. These questions highlight the main concepts presented in that chapter, as well as ideas that are often overlooked when first encountered, which will help to test the students' understanding. The efforts required in answering correctly such questions will provide the student with the ability to solve more complex problems in the exercises collected at the end of each section.