--- product_id: 13281837 title: "General Topology (Dover Books on Mathematics)" price: "₨20290" currency: LKR in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.lk/products/13281837-general-topology-dover-books-on-mathematics store_origin: LK region: Sri Lanka --- # General Topology (Dover Books on Mathematics) **Price:** ₨20290 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** General Topology (Dover Books on Mathematics) - **How much does it cost?** ₨20290 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.lk](https://www.desertcart.lk/products/13281837-general-topology-dover-books-on-mathematics) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description Among the best available reference introductions to general topology, this volume is appropriate for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students. Its treatment encompasses two broad areas of topology: "continuous topology," represented by sections on convergence, compactness, metrization and complete metric spaces, uniform spaces, and function spaces; and "geometric topology," covered by nine sections on connectivity properties, topological characterization theorems, and homotopy theory. Many standard spaces are introduced in the related problems that accompany each section (340 exercises in all). The text's value as a reference work is enhanced by a collection of historical notes, a bibliography, and index. 1970 edition. 27 figures. Review: A masterpiece - First a caveate: This book may not be the most suitable for everyone that takes a FIRST course on General Topology unless he or she is prepared to put in quite a lot of work. This is because the book contains so much information in relatively few pages that the material is necessarily quite dense. Even so the book is a good purchase because it's cheap and will serve everyone good later as a reference. The organization of the book: Everything is presented in a perfectly logical order, beginning with a summary of Set Theory and ending with topologies on Function Spaces. During the course the reader is invited to make excursions to other areas of mathematics from a topological point of view and perhaps gain insights into those fields that even specialists don't have. This is mostly done through problems for the reader to solve. Definitions and Theorems: The definitions are always the most general possible, often presented as a set of axioms that the defined quantity has to fulfill. The theorems are almost always presented in their most general form. The Proofs: The proofs are generally on either the shortest and most elegant form possible, or taken from the original publications. This is for the benefit of the reader even though it might appear to some readers as "terse" proofs because this kind of proofs is the one that gains the reader the most insight once they are understood. "Short and elegant" does NOT mean that the author leaves out details (unless they are explicitely assigned as problems). Explanations and Motivations: The text is short and to the point. This again does not mean that the author leaves out anything relevant or that he does not warn for possible pitfalls. Examples of introduced concepts and definitions: There are numerous well chosen examples, often nontrivial, to illustrate the meaning of introduced concepts. The problem set: The set of problems is just fantastic. The problems are numerous, diverse, illustrative, and again, sometimes HIGHLY nontrivial. Don't be too scared though, because the author provides very accurate hints of how to approach the more difficult ones. Bibliography, Historical Remarks and Index: One just has to admire the amount of work the author has put into this. Miscellaneous: As mentioned, the material is (necessarily) condensed, but the text is never "dry" or boring. There is an undertone of humour in quite a few places. For instance, when the author mentions that not every regular space is completely regular, because there exists a formidable example that shows this fact, he relegates that example to problem 18G "where most people won't be bothered with it". This practically guarantees that most people WILL be bothered by it by looking up 18.G. There, in 18G, he provides som many hints that it is actually doable for most people to reconstruct this formidable (i.e. difficult) example. On the Downside: There are no solved problems, and the author does not teach the reader on HOW to solve problems. This is however compensated for by the numerous hints in the problem set and through the methods of thaught one learns from reading and understanding the proofs. Also, in topology, one basically has to invent ones own mothod to solve an unsolved problem. There is no canonical way of doing things! Review: Absolutely amazing! - This is certainly one of the best books on general topology available. It requires more maturity from the reader than the usual Munkres/Armstrong standard, but IMHO it is perfectly adequate for a first contact with the subject. It is a dense book, and it does not talk much like other books, but the exposition is so clear that this is actually a quality. Being succint, it manages to cover a lot more ground than the standard references; there is much more here than a one-semester course can cover. The exercises are usually difficult; some of them are real challenges (e.g. can you find an order in which the real numbers are well-ordered? This question pops out in the first set of exercises). The exercises are actually the purpose why this book leaves its rivals far behind. They provide the reader with a deep topological way of thinking in many ways: by forcing the reader to construct counterexamples himself (an essential skill for a topologist) and generalizing the theorems presented in the text, often to explore a new technique or construction. Sometimes this may provide the reader with multiple ways to look at a particular problem, which is certainly an useful skill (not to say inspiring!). A good example is the way the author explores the interconnection between nets and filters, which provide two different frameworks for describing topologies by means of convergence. Most other books describe just one approach or the other, and even when they do both they seldom explicit how they are related. A careful reader who works throughout the whole text, or at least through most of it, will have a better understanding of topology than the reader of the more usual texts. For the sake of comparison, I should say I found the discussion here about quotient spaces far clearer than Munkres's. Willard makes clear from the beggining the distinction between the "quotient approach" and the more intuitive "identification approach", which is the formalization of the intuitive grasp of cutting and pasting spaces. The author carefully develops both points of view, to show in the end they are really the same (in the sense of an universal property - i.e., up to homeomorphism). It becomes absolutely clear then that the first, more abstract approach, gives an effective way for manipulating mathematically problems arising in the second, hence its not-so-obvious-at-a-first-glance importance. Readers who are already familiar with the methods and results of general topology and basic algebraic topology will also benefit from this book, specially from the exercises. This, together with "Counterexamples in Topology", by Steen and Seebach, form the best duo for studying general topology for real; this is the best option available for the ambitious student and the aspiring topologist. Also, as they are both Dover, the prices are ridiculously low. For a couple of bucks you may have access to some of the most beautiful treasures of mathematics. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #148,427 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #13 in Topology (Books) #152 in Mathematics (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.5 out of 5 stars 99 Reviews | ## Images ![General Topology (Dover Books on Mathematics) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71OUhSyqBzL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A masterpiece *by J***M on February 14, 2008* First a caveate: This book may not be the most suitable for everyone that takes a FIRST course on General Topology unless he or she is prepared to put in quite a lot of work. This is because the book contains so much information in relatively few pages that the material is necessarily quite dense. Even so the book is a good purchase because it's cheap and will serve everyone good later as a reference. The organization of the book: Everything is presented in a perfectly logical order, beginning with a summary of Set Theory and ending with topologies on Function Spaces. During the course the reader is invited to make excursions to other areas of mathematics from a topological point of view and perhaps gain insights into those fields that even specialists don't have. This is mostly done through problems for the reader to solve. Definitions and Theorems: The definitions are always the most general possible, often presented as a set of axioms that the defined quantity has to fulfill. The theorems are almost always presented in their most general form. The Proofs: The proofs are generally on either the shortest and most elegant form possible, or taken from the original publications. This is for the benefit of the reader even though it might appear to some readers as "terse" proofs because this kind of proofs is the one that gains the reader the most insight once they are understood. "Short and elegant" does NOT mean that the author leaves out details (unless they are explicitely assigned as problems). Explanations and Motivations: The text is short and to the point. This again does not mean that the author leaves out anything relevant or that he does not warn for possible pitfalls. Examples of introduced concepts and definitions: There are numerous well chosen examples, often nontrivial, to illustrate the meaning of introduced concepts. The problem set: The set of problems is just fantastic. The problems are numerous, diverse, illustrative, and again, sometimes HIGHLY nontrivial. Don't be too scared though, because the author provides very accurate hints of how to approach the more difficult ones. Bibliography, Historical Remarks and Index: One just has to admire the amount of work the author has put into this. Miscellaneous: As mentioned, the material is (necessarily) condensed, but the text is never "dry" or boring. There is an undertone of humour in quite a few places. For instance, when the author mentions that not every regular space is completely regular, because there exists a formidable example that shows this fact, he relegates that example to problem 18G "where most people won't be bothered with it". This practically guarantees that most people WILL be bothered by it by looking up 18.G. There, in 18G, he provides som many hints that it is actually doable for most people to reconstruct this formidable (i.e. difficult) example. On the Downside: There are no solved problems, and the author does not teach the reader on HOW to solve problems. This is however compensated for by the numerous hints in the problem set and through the methods of thaught one learns from reading and understanding the proofs. Also, in topology, one basically has to invent ones own mothod to solve an unsolved problem. There is no canonical way of doing things! ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Absolutely amazing! *by R***A on January 23, 2010* This is certainly one of the best books on general topology available. It requires more maturity from the reader than the usual Munkres/Armstrong standard, but IMHO it is perfectly adequate for a first contact with the subject. It is a dense book, and it does not talk much like other books, but the exposition is so clear that this is actually a quality. Being succint, it manages to cover a lot more ground than the standard references; there is much more here than a one-semester course can cover. The exercises are usually difficult; some of them are real challenges (e.g. can you find an order in which the real numbers are well-ordered? This question pops out in the first set of exercises). The exercises are actually the purpose why this book leaves its rivals far behind. They provide the reader with a deep topological way of thinking in many ways: by forcing the reader to construct counterexamples himself (an essential skill for a topologist) and generalizing the theorems presented in the text, often to explore a new technique or construction. Sometimes this may provide the reader with multiple ways to look at a particular problem, which is certainly an useful skill (not to say inspiring!). A good example is the way the author explores the interconnection between nets and filters, which provide two different frameworks for describing topologies by means of convergence. Most other books describe just one approach or the other, and even when they do both they seldom explicit how they are related. A careful reader who works throughout the whole text, or at least through most of it, will have a better understanding of topology than the reader of the more usual texts. For the sake of comparison, I should say I found the discussion here about quotient spaces far clearer than Munkres's. Willard makes clear from the beggining the distinction between the "quotient approach" and the more intuitive "identification approach", which is the formalization of the intuitive grasp of cutting and pasting spaces. The author carefully develops both points of view, to show in the end they are really the same (in the sense of an universal property - i.e., up to homeomorphism). It becomes absolutely clear then that the first, more abstract approach, gives an effective way for manipulating mathematically problems arising in the second, hence its not-so-obvious-at-a-first-glance importance. Readers who are already familiar with the methods and results of general topology and basic algebraic topology will also benefit from this book, specially from the exercises. This, together with "Counterexamples in Topology", by Steen and Seebach, form the best duo for studying general topology for real; this is the best option available for the ambitious student and the aspiring topologist. Also, as they are both Dover, the prices are ridiculously low. For a couple of bucks you may have access to some of the most beautiful treasures of mathematics. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Deep and insightful! *by E***S on June 18, 2024* This is a wonderful General Topology book that explores all aspects of General Topology in a deep way. The author doesn't hold back and provides you with all possible perspectives in a given topic. To this, the exercises add even more depth by providing you with interesting examples and counterexamples as well as letting you find some really importnant results for yourself before they are properly examined in the book. All of the above make this book an excellent introduction as well as reference for General Topology. A fair warning is that before reading this book you should have mastered Metric Spaces and their Topology, because they are used as motivation for a lot of definitions which otherwise seem unnatural at the first glance. Chapter 2 of Rudin or chapters 1 and 2 of Tao's Analysis 2 should suffice. ## Frequently Bought Together - General Topology (Dover Books on Mathematics) - Counterexamples in Topology;Dover Books on Mathematics - Introduction to Topology: Second Edition (Dover Books on Mathematics) --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.lk/products/13281837-general-topology-dover-books-on-mathematics](https://www.desertcart.lk/products/13281837-general-topology-dover-books-on-mathematics) --- *Product available on Desertcart Sri Lanka* *Store origin: LK* *Last updated: 2026-06-01*