Clive Thompsonpeople, PEOPLE
some hot *hot* new gossip just dropped about Cantor's infinity proof
turns out he stole it
Omar Antolín@clive Wow, this is big news! To save people a click: the proof in question is not that there are uncountable many real numbers (which is what I thought you.meant by "Cantor's infinity proof"), but the proof that there are countably many algebraic numbers, and it was stolen from Dedekind. This explains why Dedekind seems so hostile to Cantor in other writings of his.
@clive A more detailed story appeared in Quanta: https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-man-who-stole-infinity-20260225/ (There I learned that it wasn't just the proof of the countability of algebraic numbers: for the proof that the real numbers are uncountable, Cantor found a proof first, but Dedekind suggested a simplification and that simplified version is what Cantor published!)
And Demian Goos's paper about this is linked from his personal website: https://demian-goos.de/
Aha, thank you!
Paul Hoffman
Vishcious
Luke Kanies@clive I was able to bring this up in conversation tonight! I mean, it might have been slightly forced on my part, but like, infinity(ish) came up, so obviously I had to talk about how this critical proof about differential infinities was stolen
Well done!