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   Omar Antolín (oantolin@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Friday, 27-Feb-2026 11:21:03 JST Omar Antolín

   in reply to

   • Clive Thompson

   @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/

   • Embed this notice
     Omar Antolín (oantolin@mathstodon.xyz)'s status on Friday, 27-Feb-2026 11:21:04 JST Omar Antolín

     in reply to

     • Clive Thompson

     @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.

     Rich Felker repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Clive Thompson (clive@saturation.social)'s status on Friday, 27-Feb-2026 11:21:05 JST Clive Thompson

     people, PEOPLE

     some hot *hot* new gossip just dropped about Cantor's infinity proof

     turns out he stole it

     https://boingboing.net/2026/02/25/newly-found-letters-show-georg-cantor-stole-his-famous-infinity-proof.html

     Rich Felker repeated this.