THE FOUNDATION OF ALGEBRAIC TOPOLOGY

BROUWER, L. E. J. [LUITZEN EGBERTUS JAN].

Beweis der Invarianz der Dimensionenzahl.

Leipzig, B.G. Teubner, 1911. 8vo. Original printed wrappers, no backstrip and a small nick to front wrapper. In "Mathematische Annalen. Begründet durch Alfred Clebsch und Carl Neumann. 70. Band. 2. Heft." Entire issue offered. Internally very fine and clean. [Brouwer:] Pp. 161-65. [Entire issue: Pp. 161-296].

First printing of Brouwer's "revolutionary" and "landmark" contribution to topology. It marked a new period within topology-research: "Although the paper is short and merely contains a simple proof of the invariance of dimension, "it is infact much more than this - the paradigm of an entirely new and highly promising method now known as algebraic topology"". (Aull. Handbook of the history of general topology. P. 150).

"The article submitted in June was the momentous "Proof of the invariance of the dimension number". In the following month it was followed with a longer paper, also a masterpiece. Of these two revolutionary papers, [The present paper] used his newly discovered "degree of a mapping" concept implicitly for the proof of dimensional invariance. [the paper] effectively swept away all previous attempts to prove dimensional invariance. (James. History of Topology, P. 16)

"Cantor and others offered proofs that, indeed, a continuous mapping of points between dimensions was impossible, but a fully satisfactory proof establishing the invariance of dimension was not provided until the topologist L. E. J. Brouwer did so in 1910". (DSB).

Order-nr.: 44532