Union College Union | Digital Works Honors Theses Student Work 6-2017 The Axiom of Choice in Topology Ruoxuan Jia Union College - Schenectady, NY Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalworks.union.edu/theses Part of the Geometry and Topology Commons Recommended Citation Jia, Ruoxuan, "The Axiom of Choice in Topology" (2017). Honors Theses. 46. https://digitalworks.union.edu/theses/46 This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Work at Union | Digital Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of Union | Digital Works. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. The Axiom of Choice in Topology Ruoxuan Jia March 15, 2017 Abstract Cantor believed that properties holding for finite sets might also hold for infinite sets. One such property involves choices; the Ax- iom of Choice states that we can always form a set by choosing one element from each set in a collection of pairwise disjoint non-empty sets. Since its introduction in 1904, this seemingly simple statement has been somewhat controversial because it is magically powerful in mathematics in general and topology in particular. In this paper, we will discuss some essential concepts in topology such as compactness and continuity, how special topologies such as the product topology and compactification are defined, and we will introduce machinery such as filters and ultrafilters. Most importantly, we will see how the Axiom of Choice impacts topology. Most significantly, the Axiom of choice in set theory is the founda- tion on which rests Tychonoff's Infinite Product Theorem, which peo- ple were stuck on before the axiom of choice was applied.