Cantor’s New Look at the Infinite

Georg Cantor was born in St. Petersburg (now Leningrad) on March 3, 1845. His parents had emigrated from Denmark; his father was a converted Protestant and his mother a born Catholic, but according to some evidence both were of Jewish origin. It may be that this multicultural background played a role in Cantor’s early interest in medieval theological arguments, particularly those concerning continuity and the infinite. From St. Petersburg the family moved to Germany, and it was there, at the University of Halle, that in 1874 he published his first significant work on the concept of infinity. This was only the first of a series of works to be published between 1874 and 1884, and it at once changed the entire foundation on which the concept had been based thus far.