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Re: Complete metric quotient spaces

Subject: Re: Complete metric quotient spaces
From: "Robert Israel"
Date: 14 Sep 2006 13:38:01 -0700
Newsgroups: sci.math
Stephen J. Herschkorn wrote:
> Robert Israel wrote:
>
> >In article <Pine.BSI.4.58.0609140326310.7806@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> >William Elliot  <marsh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>---- From: rusty <mr.rusty@xxxxxxx>
> >>Newsgroups: sci.math
> >>Subject: Re: Complete metric quotient spaces
> >>
> >>William Elliot wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>>You gradually seem to be working out what a Polish space is ;-)
> >>>
> >>>
> >>A Polish space is any space homeomorphic to a complete metric space?
> >>
> >>
> >
> >You left out separable.
> >
> >
> >
> >>Why's it called Polish?  Because Bourbaki were Polish?
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Bourbaki were mostly French.  Sierpinski, Kuratowski, Tarski, Banach etc.
> >were Polish.

According to D. Stroock, "Probability Theory, an Analytic View", p.
124:

  Indeed, the term Polish space was coined by Bourbaki in recognition
  of the contribution made to this subject by the Polish school in
  general and C. Kuratowski in particular (cf. Kuratowski's
"Topologie",
  vol. 1, Warszawa-Lwow, (1933)).

> As I recall, wasn't Polish space originally called  "Name" space, where
> "Name" was the name of a Polish mathematician?  I thought that some non
> Polish speaker found the name hard to pronounce, so s/he came up with
> the more simply pronounced term, "Polish space."

I suspect you're thinking of "(Reverse) Polish notation", which should
really be "(Reverse) Lukasiewicz notation".

Robert Israel                                israel@xxxxxxxxxxx
Department of Mathematics        http://www.math.ubc.ca/~israel
University of British Columbia            Vancouver, BC, Canada


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