TRANSFINITE NUMBERS

Georg Cantor was a Russian mathematician educated in Germany (1867-1918). He lived and worked in Germany I think. He discovered things about infinity, that there are different levels of infinity........or relative sizes of infinity in different contexts. He introduced the so-called transfinite numbers to describe relative sizes of infinity. He created the field of set theory and worked on problems about trigonometric series. David Hilbert........the leading mathematician of his day identified Cantor's work as at the top of mathematical discoveries of the period. Cantor appears to have had a wife and children and lived in a reasonable house all of his life. I think he inherited wealth from his family and worked for a time as a professor in Germany. The point is that Cantor suffered from mental illness.........it sounds like he had bipolar disorder. He was in and out of hospitals all of his life..........and things got worse as he grew older. Cantor exclaimed to his colleagues often that his ideas about transfinite numbers and levels of infinity were communicated to him by God......He had a kind of affectation about God that was related to his mental state.