born March 3, 1845, St. Petersburg, Russia
died Jan. 6, 1918, Halle, Ger.
German mathematician, founder of set theory .
He was the first to examine number systems, such as the rational number s and the real number s, systematically as complete entities, or sets. This led him to the surprising discovery that not all infinite sets are the same size. In particular, he showed that the rational numbers could be put in a one-to-one correspondence with the counting numbers; hence the set is countable. He also showed that no such correspondence is possible for the much larger set of irrational number s; hence they are known as an uncountable set. His investigations led him to the classification of transfinite numbers, which are, informally speaking, degrees of infinity .