History
Homology classes were first defined rigorously by Henri Poincaré in his seminal paper "Analysis situs", J. Ecole polytech. (2) 1. 1–121 (1895).
The homology group was further developed by Emmy Noether and, independently, by Leopold Vietoris and Walther Mayer, in the period 1925–28. Prior to this, topological classes in combinatorial topology were not formally considered as abelian groups. The spread of homology groups marked the change of terminology and viewpoint from "combinatorial topology" to "algebraic topology".
Read more about this topic: Homology (mathematics)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.”
—William James (1842–1910)