Wikipedia Biographical Summary:

"...Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor (March 3 [O.S. February 19] 1845] – January 6, 1918) was a German mathematician, best known as the inventor of set theory, which has become a fundamental theory in mathematics. Cantor established the importance of one-to-one correspondence between sets, defined infinite and well-ordered sets, and proved that the real numbers are "more numerous" than the natural numbers. ..."

"...Cantor was born in 1845 in the western merchant colony in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and brought up in the city until he was eleven. Georg, the oldest of six children..."

"...Cantor's father had been a member of the Saint Petersburg stock exchange; when he became ill, the family moved to Germany in 1856, first to Wiesbaden then to Frankfurt ..."

"...After receiving a substantial inheritance upon his father's death in 1863, Cantor shifted his studies to the University of Berlin ..."

"...In 1867, Berlin granted him the PhD for a thesis on number theory, De aequationibus secundi gradus indeterminatis..."

"...Cantor took up a position at the University of Halle, where he spent his entire career..."

"...In 1874, Cantor married Vally Guttmann. They had six children, the last (Rudolph) born in 1886..."

"...Cantor suffered his first known bout of depression in 1884..."

"...This emotional crisis led him to apply to lecture on philosophy rather than mathematics. He also began an intense study of Elizabethan literature in an attempt to prove that Francis Bacon wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare..."

"...his posthumous diagnosis of bipolarity has been accepted as the root cause of his erratic mood..."

"...Cantor retired in 1913, living in poverty and suffering from malnourishment during World War I. The public celebration of his 70th birthday was canceled because of the war. He died on January 6, 1918 in the sanatorium where he had spent the final year of his life...."

SOURCE: Wikipedia contributors, 'Georg Cantor', Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 7 August 2011, 16:20 UTC, <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Georg_Cantor&oldid=443527024> [accessed 9 August 2011]