Mathematician, outstanding teacher, and UseNet kook.

Wrote three books, including ''Boolean Rings'' and ''The Theory of Sets and Transfinite Arithmetic''. It is a very, very easy book. It's still real math. A lot of the reason it's easy is Abian's superb English description of the contents. You can actually read the English without the symbology and get about 80% of the book. And then the meaning of the symbols is just obvious. If it can be done once, why can't it be done all the time?

* How very funny that you would pick Abian, of all people. I mean, I haven't read that book, but yes, I've heard it's good, however, "why can't it be done all the time"? Remember what happened to Cantor? There's something about transfinites, perhaps.... What am I talking about? Abian is one of the most infamous all-time looney net kooks, easily up there with ArchimedesPlutonium; see, e.g., http://www.codehappy.net/site.cgi?ac=1&aid=104 Ok, that's purely ad hominem, I never heard anyone complain about Abian's professional math at all. Still... -- Doug
* Ah, a 1993 sci.physics thread showing Abian at his "best". I made a small joke therein, but some of the other responses, such as several by John Baez, are hysterically funny: http://xrl.us/rbv4
* P.S. you may be thinking this is a coincidence of names. It is not. This is the same Abian.

''Yes I know it is the same Abian. I picked him because, damnit, the guy's book is really superb. His still rarer work, BooleanRings, is even better. Just what drove Abian to become net.kooky is a good question. A calm warm intellect shines like a beacon from his books. I wonder if there is any bio available that would explain what happened to him.''

Not senile dementia. He was publishing good math papers up until his death in 1999.
*http://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~suh/abian/abian-homepage.html
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CategoryPerson CategoryMath