Like Descartes and Pascal, Hans Hahn (1879–1934) was both an eminent mathematician and a highly influential philosopher. He founded the Vienna Circle and was the teacher of both Kurt Gödel and Karl Popper. His seminal contributions to functional analysis and general topology had a huge impact on the development of modern analysis. Hahn’s passionate interest in the foundations of mathematics, vividly described in Sir Karl Popper’s foreword (which became his last essay), had a decisive influence upon Gödel. Like Freud, Musil and Schönberg, Hahn became a pivotal figure in the feverish intellectual climate of Vienna between the two wars.
Volume 1: The first volume of Hahn’s Collected Works contains his path-breaking contributions to functional analysis, the theory of curves, and ordered groups. These papers are commented on by Harro Heuser, Hans Sagan, and Laszlo Fuchs. Volume 2: The second volume deals with functional analysis, real analysis and hydrodynamics. The commentaries are written by Wilhelm Frank, Davis Preiss, and Alfred Kluwick. Volume 3: In the third volume, Hahn’s writings on harmonic analysis, measure and integration, complex analysis and philosophy are collected and commented on by Jean-Pierre Kahane, Heinz Bauer, Ludger Kaup, and Christian Thiel. This volume also contains excerpts of Hahn’s letters and accounts by his students and colleagues.