Related papers: The ring of fluxions
From the original PREFACE: The rings of quotients recently introduced by Johnson and Utumi are applied to the ring $C(X)$ of all continuous real-valued functions on a completely regular space $X$. Let $Q(X)$ denote the maximal ring of…
This is a survey of several approaches to the framework for working with infinitesimals and infinite numbers, originally developed by Abraham Robinson in the 1960s, and their constructive engagement with the Cantor-Dedekind postulate and…
Abraham Robinson's framework for modern infinitesimals was developed half a century ago. It enables a re-evaluation of the procedures of the pioneers of mathematical analysis. Their procedures have been often viewed through the lens of the…
Infinitesimals are natural products of the human imagination. Their history goes back to the Greek antiquity. Their role in the calculus and analysis has seen dramatic ups and downs. They have stimulated strong opinions and even vitriol.…
We explore the issue of providing a foundational framework for Leibnizian infinitesimals in the light of modern standard and nonstandard approaches. We outline a trichotomy of ordinals, cardinals and ringinals as a historiographic tool. A…
The presence of infinitesimals is traced back to some of the most general algebraic structures, namely, semigroups, and in fact, magmas, [1], in which none of the structures of linear order, field, or the Archimedean property need to be…
In this paper we introduce the concept of purely infinite rings, which in the simple case agrees with the already existing notion of pure infiniteness. We establish various permanence properties of this notion, with respect to passage to…
We introduce the ring of Fermat reals, an extension of the real field containing nilpotent infinitesimals. The construction takes inspiration from Smooth Infinitesimal Analysis (SIA), but provides a powerful theory of actual infinitesimals…
The theory of Gromov-Hausdorff convergence is applied to sequences of quotient rings of integers. It is shown the existence of limit rings (fields) as the Gromov-Hausdorff limits of sequences of metric quotient rings. The relation of these…
Felix Klein and Abraham Fraenkel each formulated a criterion for a theory of infinitesimals to be successful, in terms of the feasibility of implementation of the Mean Value Theorem. We explore the evolution of the idea over the past…
It is a ubiquitous opinion among mathematicians that a real number is just a point in the line. If this rough definition is not enough, then a mathematician may provide a formal definition of the real numbers in the set theoretic and…
Many historians of the calculus deny significant continuity between infinitesimal calculus of the 17th century and 20th century developments such as Robinson's theory. Robinson's hyperreals, while providing a consistent theory of…
Systems of germs of sets in infinite-dimensional spaces are introduced and studied. Such a system corresponds to a local zero-set of an ideal of the ring of analytic functions of infinite number of variables. Conversely, this system of…
In the present paper, dedicated to Yuri Manin, we investigate the general notion of rings of $\mathbb S[\mu_{n,+}]$-polynomials and relate this concept to the known notion of number systems. The Riemann-Roch theorem for the ring $\mathbb Z$…
Exactly 170 years ago, the construction of the real quaternion algebra by William Hamilton was announced in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. It became the first example of non-commutative division rings and a major turning point…
This is a transcript of a lecture course on Infinite Permutation Groups given by Peter M. Neumann (1940-2020) in Oxford during the academic year 1988-1989. The field of Infinite Permutation Groups only emerged as an independent field of…
We show that the field of complex numbers $\mathbb C$ contains non-zero infinitesimals by observing that $\mathbb C$ contains non-Archimedean subfields. Our observation is based on an old theorem in algebra due to E. Steinitz, discussed in…
We present a characterization of the completeness of the field of real numbers in the form of a \emph{collection of several equivalent statements} borrowed from algebra, real analysis, general topology, and non-standard analysis. We also…
We introduce Kurosh elements in division rings based on the idea of a conjecture of Kurosh. Using this, we generalize a result of Faith in [3] and of Herstein in [6].
These 1992 lectures notes present a powerful formalism mostly developed in the 1980s by Borderies, Goldreich and Tremaine to address planetary ring dynamical issues. These notes make a special emphasis on ring microphysics, quantified with…