For more information about this meeting, contact Svetlana Katok, Robin Enderle, Flossie Dunlop.
| Title: | The Continuum Hypothesis |
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| Seminar: | PMASS Colloquium |
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| Speaker: | Jan Reimann, The Pennsylvania State University |
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| Abstract: |
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| In the late 19th century the German mathematician Georg Cantor tried
to show that every uncountable subset of the real numbers can be
mapped bijectively onto the real line. He was unable to prove this,
and the question became the Continuum Hypothesis (CH). It was the
first question on Hilbert's famous problem list of 1900. Seminal works
by Gödel and Cohen showed that CH can neither be proved nor disproved
from Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory (ZF), a basic axiom system for sets
that captures most of modern mathematics. In other words, CH is
independent of ZF.
In this talk I will sketch the history of the Continuum Hypothesis,
how it influenced the development of logic and set theory in the 20th
century, and I will outline how one can show that a statement is
independent of ZF. |
Room Reservation Information
| Room Number: | MB113 |
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| Date: | 02 / 23 / 2012 |
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| Time: | 02:30pm - 03:30pm |
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