Re: looking for Fréchet's 1906 Ph.D. dissertation introducing metric spaces

Dan wrote (in part):

For example, rather than learning about metric spaces
from Frechet's 1906 dissertation, I would think it more
expedient to learn about them from Rudin's "Principles
of Mathematical Analysis" or some other standard text.

The reason that I look for these old classic papers is
not so much to learn mathematical concepts from them,
but rather to reference them in the stuff I write about
to give myself and potential readers some idea of where
and when and how a link in the web of mathematics came
to be. I think knowing such background information is
helpful and enlightening, even though not directly
related to the concept itself.

I didn't think you intended to learn about metric spaces
from Frechet's paper. My point (perhaps not very well
expressed) was that even if you know quite a bit about
metric spaces, you might still find it difficult to follow
Frechet's paper (which involves quite a bit more than
just introducing metric spaces).

I know that there is more and more intellectual material available
online. And I don't like to be a whiner. But to be honest, it
is alittle difficult for me to understand how papers that have
revolutionized mathematics (like Frechet's 1906 paper introducing
metric spaces or Legesgue's 1902 paper introducing Lebesgue
integration) can remain so elusive and difficult to access. This
is intellectual history that has changed the thinking of mankind.
Shouldn't that mean something to someone enough to make it easily
accessible to all? What if the U.S.'s "Bill of Rights" was as
difficult to access? England's "Magna Carta"? The Code of Hammurabi?

Well, as anyone who has been following my posts since 1999 will
know, this isn't something you need to convince me about!
I've gone to great lengths to archive in sci.math quite
a bit of "mathematical history". Often, I'll just cite the
relevant papers, but even then I try to give as complete
bibliographic information as I can (complete journal titles,
full author names, MR & Zbl & JFM citation codes, etc.).

The ruler function
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.math/msg/95b4aabac073ca91
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.math/msg/6be4464698ebe19a

Biography of Luzin
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.math/msg/fb9d47de618ef57d

Algebra word problems from two 1850's U.S. texts
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.math/msg/e66a92765d6b6dc5

Ten all-time most influential math books
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.math/msg/998f4ff95650c6ff

Dave L. Renfro

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