Alfred Tarski

Alfred Tarski (19011983) was a renowned Polish/American mathematician, a giant of the twentieth century, who helped establish the foundations of geometry, set theory, model theory, algebraic logic and universal algebra. Throughout his career, he taught mathematics and logic at universities and sometimes in secondary schools. Many of his writings before 1939 were in Polish and remained inaccessible to most mathematicians and historians until now.

This self-contained book focuses on Tarski's early contributions to geometry and mathematics education, including the famous BanachTarski paradoxical decomposition of a sphere as well as high-school mathematical topics and pedagogy. These themes are significant since Tarski's later research on geometry and its foundations stemmed in part from his early employment as a high-school mathematics teacher and teacher-trainer. The book contains careful translations and much newly uncovered social background of these works written during Tarski's years in Poland.

Alfred Tarski: Early Work in Poland serves the mathematical, educational, philosophical and historical communities by publishing Tarski's early writings in a broadly accessible form, providing background from archival work in Poland and updating Tarski's bibliography.

A list of errata can be found on the author Smith's personal webpage.

Evaluates and reflects upon Alfred Taski's early writings Unique compilation of papers from Alfred Tarki's early years as a mathematician and logician Contains material which has previously been inaccessible to mathematicians and historians of mathematics

Autorentext
James Smith, Professor für Afrika- und Entwicklungsstudien, ist Direktor des ESRC Innogen Research Centre in Edinburgh und bekleidet eine Ehrenprofessur an der Universität von Johannesburg. Er hat mit zahlreichen internationalen Organisationen zusammengearbeitet, unter anderem mit Oxfam.

Inhalt
1 Tarski's first paper.- 1.1 Introduction .- 1.2 Item 1 below (nearing completion).- 2 Papers on equidecomposibility of polygons.- 2.1 Introduction.- 2.2 Item 2 below (nearing completion).- 2.3 Item 6 below (old translation, needs redoing).- 2.4 Item 8 below (old translation, needs redoing).- 2.5 Exercise 31pc in item 11g below.- 3 Papers related to secondary teaching.- 3.1 Introduction.- 3.2 Item 4 below (meeting report).- 3.3 Item 7 below (on circles, nearing completion).- 3.4 Extract from Item 9 below (textbook).- 3.5 Remainder of item 11 below (exercises).- 4 Assorted contributions.- 4.1 Introduction.- 4.2 Item 3 below (on insurance).- 4.3 Item 5 below (abstract on truth).- 4.4 Item 10 below (Lukasiewicz abstract on definitions).- 4.5 Item 12 below (contributions to discussions).- 5 Bibliography.- 5.1 Introduction .- 5.2 List of Tarski works published since the Collected Works.- 5.3 List of biographical books and articles.- 5.4 List of summaries of Tarski's scientific work.- 5.5 References for the present book .- Illustrations.- Young Tarski (frontispiece).- From the first paper .- From the 1924 paper.- Something from one of the teachers' journals .- Index.