General Topology

Rating:
Summary: Willard's General Topology - a must for every bookshelf
Review: One of the purest and most intellectually challenging branches of modern mathematics, general topology is not a subject for the faint hearted. So it was a pleasure when I first encountered one of the best reference introductions to the subject to have seen the light of day. Willard's book remains one of my all-time favourites. It covers everything the aspiring topologist needs to know, and certainly supplies more than enough information for a potential PhD student to choose their initial area of specialisation. The chapters are split intelligently into sub-topics which move at a sensible pace from its introductory notes on essential set theory, through subspaces, products, compactness, separation and countability axioms, compactifications, and function spaces. Many of the "standard spaces" of general topology are introduced and examined in the large number of related problems accompanying each section. And for those wanting a bit more context than a maths book normally provides there's a detailed collection of historical notes for each chapter.