| Author | Lynn Arthur Steen J. Arthur Seebach, Jr. |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Topological spaces |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Springer-Verlag |
Publication date | 1970 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Hardback,Paperback |
| Pages | 244 pp. |
| ISBN | 0-486-68735-X |
| OCLC | 32311847 |
| 514/.3 20 | |
| LC Class | QA611.3 .S74 1995 |
Counterexamples in Topology (1970, 2nd ed. 1978) is a book onmathematics bytopologistsLynn Steen andJ. Arthur Seebach, Jr.
In the process of working on problems like themetrization problem, topologists (including Steen and Seebach) have defined a wide variety oftopological properties. It is often useful in the study and understanding of abstracts such astopological spaces to determine that one property does not follow from another. One of the easiest ways of doing this is to find acounterexample which exhibits one property but not the other. InCounterexamples in Topology, Steen and Seebach, together with five students in an undergraduate research project atSt. Olaf College,Minnesota in the summer of 1967, canvassed the field oftopology for such counterexamples and compiled them in an attempt to simplify the literature.
For instance, an example of afirst-countable space which is notsecond-countable is counterexample #3, thediscrete topology on anuncountable set. This particular counterexample shows that second-countability does not follow from first-countability.
Several other "Counterexamples in ..." books and papers have followed, with similar motivations.
In her review of the first edition,Mary Ellen Rudin wrote:
In his submission[2] toMathematical Reviews C. Wayne Patty wrote:
When the second edition appeared in 1978 its review inAdvances in Mathematics treated topology as territory to be explored:
Several of thenaming conventions in this book differ from more accepted modern conventions, particularly with respect to theseparation axioms. The authors use the terms T3, T4, and T5 to refer toregular,normal, andcompletely normal. They also refer tocompletely Hausdorff asUrysohn. This was a result of the different historical development of metrization theory andgeneral topology; seeHistory of the separation axioms for more.
Thelong line in example 45 is what most topologists nowadays would call the 'closed long ray'.