Johannes Karl Thomae

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Born: 11 Dec 1840 in Germany
Died: 2 March 1921

Johannes Thomae taught at Göttingen, Halle, Freiburg and Jena.

Cantor had discovered that the points in n-dimensional space could be put in one-one correspondence with the line. In a letter of 1877 to Dedekind he said I see it but I don't believe it. This was published in 1878 but since the correspondence was not continuous many attempts to prove the invariance of dimension using continuity were made.

Thomae was the first to attempt a general proof of the invariance of dimension but it was not satisfactory since the necessary topological tools had not been developed at this time.