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The work of Mary Ellen Rudin. (English) Zbl 0837.54002

Tall, Franklin D. (ed.), The work of Mary Ellen Rudin. Papers presented at the seventh summer conference on general topology and applications in honor of Mary Ellen Rudin and her work, held in Madison, WI, USA, from June 26 to 29, 1991. New York, NY: The New York Academy of Sciences. Ann. N. Y. Acad. Sci. 705, 1-16 (1993).
Mary Ellen Rudin is in many respects the most notable set-theoretic topologist of our day. In considerable part her fame derives from an extraordinary ability to generate examples, often very complicated, that constitute answers to important questions that have been asked by others in that field and related fields. In this article the author, one of her former students who is especially well acquainted with her work, surveys her many contributions — and those of many of her students — from her earliest papers (1950) to the problems she is working on today. The style is that known as “preaching to the choir”, showing little sympathy for those not already versed in the concepts — and the symbolism — of the field, and yet it succeeds in giving even an “outsider” a strong and favorable impression of the career and some of the reasons for success of this kind, warm, human and wonderfully able mathematician.
For the entire collection see [Zbl 0801.00017].

MSC:

54-03 History of general topology
01A70 Biographies, obituaries, personalia, bibliographies
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