In an 1874 paper, Georg Cantor proved that there are different sizes of infinity and changed math forever. A trove of newly unearthed letters shows that it was also an act of plagiarism.
Well I heard about Bernie Madoff stealing millions, but compared to infinity that’s chickenfeed, haha.
Srsly I’d call the headline overstated. Cantor conceived and proved a now-famous and important theorem but his proof was messy. He sent it to his then-buddy Dedekind and Dedekind suggested a way to make the proof cleaner. Cantor then submitted the cleaned-up proof for publication without citing Dedekind’s improvements. That was a no-no but (analogy) the headline makes it sound like Cantor committed murder when he really only beat the crap out of the person. Still bad, but not all the way equivalent. Dedekind was rightfully pissed, but things eventually smoothed out somdwhat between them.
The article also goes into why Cantor didn’t mention Dedekind in the paper. Basically Cantor knew that the journal editor considered Dedekind an enemy. So mentioning Dedekind might have made the paper more likely to get rejected. And for similarly political reasons, Cantor wanted the paper in that specific journal. So it is pitched as not being purely about personal glory, though who knows.
Anyway, the article is quite an interesting piece of historical research and not a good look for Cantor, but I’d have toned down the headline and blurb.
Well I heard about Bernie Madoff stealing millions, but compared to infinity that’s chickenfeed, haha.
Srsly I’d call the headline overstated. Cantor conceived and proved a now-famous and important theorem but his proof was messy. He sent it to his then-buddy Dedekind and Dedekind suggested a way to make the proof cleaner. Cantor then submitted the cleaned-up proof for publication without citing Dedekind’s improvements. That was a no-no but (analogy) the headline makes it sound like Cantor committed murder when he really only beat the crap out of the person. Still bad, but not all the way equivalent. Dedekind was rightfully pissed, but things eventually smoothed out somdwhat between them.
The article also goes into why Cantor didn’t mention Dedekind in the paper. Basically Cantor knew that the journal editor considered Dedekind an enemy. So mentioning Dedekind might have made the paper more likely to get rejected. And for similarly political reasons, Cantor wanted the paper in that specific journal. So it is pitched as not being purely about personal glory, though who knows.
Anyway, the article is quite an interesting piece of historical research and not a good look for Cantor, but I’d have toned down the headline and blurb.