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Calculus, originally called infinitesimal calculus or "the calculus of infinitesimals", is the mathematical study of continuous change, in the same way that geometry is the study of shape and algebra is the study of generalizations of arithmetic operations.
The history of calculus is fraught with philosophical debates about the meaning and logical validity of fluxions or infinitesimal numbers. The standard way to resolve these debates is to define the operations of calculus using epsilon–delta procedures rather than infinitesimals. Nonstandard analysis instead reformulates the calculus using a logically rigorous notion of infinitesimal numbers.
Haskell Brooks Curry was an American mathematician and logician. Curry is best known for his work in combinatory logic. While the initial concept of combinatory logic was based on a single paper by Moses Schönfinkel, Curry did much of the development. Curry is also known for Curry's paradox and the Curry–Howard correspondence. There are three programming languages named after him, Haskell, Brook and Curry, as well as the concept of currying, a technique used for transforming functions in mathematics and computer science.
Abraham Robinson was a mathematician who is most widely known for development of non-standard analysis, a mathematically rigorous system whereby infinitesimal and infinite numbers were reincorporated into modern mathematics. Nearly half of Robinson's papers were in applied mathematics rather than in pure mathematics.
In mathematics, infinitesimals or infinitesimal numbers are quantities that are closer to zero than any standard real number, but are not zero. They do not exist in the standard real number system, but do exist in many other number systems, such as the surreal numbers and hyperreal numbers, which can be thought of as the real numbers augmented with a system of infinitesimal quantities, as well as infinite quantities, which are the reciprocals of the infinitesimals.
Foundations of mathematics is the study of the philosophical and logical and/or algorithmic basis of mathematics, or, in a broader sense, the mathematical investigation of what underlies the philosophical theories concerning the nature of mathematics. In this latter sense, the distinction between foundations of mathematics and philosophy of mathematics turns out to be quite vague. Foundations of mathematics can be conceived as the study of the basic mathematical concepts and how they form hierarchies of more complex structures and concepts, especially the fundamentally important structures that form the language of mathematics also called metamathematical concepts, with an eye to the philosophical aspects and the unity of mathematics. The search for foundations of mathematics is a central question of the philosophy of mathematics; the abstract nature of mathematical objects presents special philosophical challenges.
Luitzen Egbertus Jan Brouwer, usually cited as L. E. J. Brouwer but known to his friends as Bertus, was a Dutch mathematician and philosopher, who worked in topology, set theory, measure theory and complex analysis. He is known as the founder of modern topology, particularly for establishing his fixed-point theorem and the topological invariance of dimension.
Solomon Feferman was an American philosopher and mathematician who worked in mathematical logic.
In model theory, a transfer principle states that all statements of some language that are true for some structure are true for another structure. One of the first examples was the Lefschetz principle, which states that any sentence in the first-order language of fields that is true for the complex numbers is also true for any algebraically closed field of characteristic 0.
In mathematics, nonstandard calculus is the modern application of infinitesimals, in the sense of nonstandard analysis, to infinitesimal calculus. It provides a rigorous justification for some arguments in calculus that were previously considered merely heuristic.
Oswald Veblen was an American mathematician, geometer and topologist, whose work found application in atomic physics and the theory of relativity. He proved the Jordan curve theorem in 1905; while this was long considered the first rigorous proof of the theorem, many now also consider Camille Jordan's original proof rigorous.
Paul Isaac Bernays was a Swiss mathematician, who made significant contributions to mathematical logic, axiomatic set theory, and the philosophy of mathematics. He was an assistant and close collaborator of David Hilbert.
Howard Jerome Keisler is an American mathematician, currently professor emeritus at University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research has included model theory and non-standard analysis.
Nonstandard analysis and its offshoot, nonstandard calculus, have been criticized by several authors, notably Errett Bishop, Paul Halmos, and Alain Connes. These criticisms are analyzed below.
Elementary Calculus: An Infinitesimal approach is a textbook by H. Jerome Keisler. The subtitle alludes to the infinitesimal numbers of the hyperreal number system of Abraham Robinson and is sometimes given as An approach using infinitesimals. The book is available freely online and is currently published by Dover.
Izak (Ieke) Moerdijk is a Dutch mathematician, currently working at Utrecht University, who in 2012 won the Spinoza prize.
John Lane Bell is a Canadian philosopher and logician. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. He has made contributions to mathematical logic and philosophy, and is the author of a number of books. His research includes such topics as set theory, model theory, lattice theory, modal logic, quantum logic, constructive mathematics, type theory, topos theory, infinitesimal analysis, spacetime theory, and the philosophy of mathematics. He is the author of more than 70 articles and of 11 books. In 2009, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
Wilhelmus Anthonius Josephus Luxemburg was a Dutch American mathematician who was a professor of mathematics at the California Institute of Technology.
Albert Harold Lightstone (1926–1976) was a Canadian mathematician. He was one of the pioneers of non-standard analysis, a doctoral student of Abraham Robinson, and later a co-author with Robinson of the book Nonarchimedean Fields and Asymptotic Expansions.
Jean Estelle Hirsh Rubin was an American mathematician known for her research on the axiom of choice. She worked for many years as a professor of mathematics at Purdue University. Rubin wrote five books: three on the axiom of choice, and two more on more general topics in set theory and mathematical logic.
