Considered by many to be Abraham Robinson's magnum opus, this book offers an explanation of the development and applications of non-standard analysis by the mathematician who founded the subject. Non-standard analysis grew out of Robinson's attempt to resolve the contradictions posed by infinitesimals within calculus. He introduced this new subject in a seminar at Princeton in 1960, and it remains as controversial today as it was then. This paperback reprint of the 1974 revised edition is indispensable reading for anyone interested in non-standard analysis. It treats in rich detail many areas of application, including topology, functions of a real variable, functions of a complex variable, and normed linear spaces, together with problems of boundary layer flow of viscous fluids and rederivations of Saint-Venant's hypothesis concerning the distribution of stresses in an elastic body.

The aim of this book is to make Robinson's discovery, and some of the subsequent research, available to students with a background in undergraduate mathematics. In its various forms, the manuscript was used by the second author in several graduate courses at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The first chapter and parts of the rest of the book can be used in an advanced undergraduate course. Research mathematicians who want a quick introduction to nonstandard analysis will also find it useful. The main addition of this book to the contributions of previous textbooks on nonstandard analysis (12,37,42,46) is the first chapter, which eases the reader into the subject with an elementary model suitable for the calculus, and the fourth chapter on measure theory in nonstandard models.

Since their appearance in the late 19th century, the Cantor--Dedekind theory of real numbers and philosophy of the continuum have emerged as pillars of standard mathematical philosophy. On the other hand, this period also witnessed the emergence of a variety of alternative theories of real numbers and corresponding theories of continua, as well as non-Archimedean geometry, non-standard analysis, and a number of important generalizations of the system of real numbers, some of which have been described as arithmetic continua of one type or another. With the exception of E.W. Hobson's essay, which is concerned with the ideas of Cantor and Dedekind and their reception at the turn of the century, the papers in the present collection are either concerned with or are contributions to, the latter groups of studies. All the contributors are outstanding authorities in their respective fields, and the essays, which are directed to historians and philosophers of mathematics as well as to mathematicians who are concerned with the foundations of their subject, are preceded by a lengthy historical introduction.

Logic Colloquium '77