Number & MeasureGreek → English
Topology
/təˈpɒlədʒi/noun
The branch of mathematics concerned with properties that survive stretching and bending but not tearing.
The Greek roots
τόπος
tópos
place, position
λόγος
lógos
study, account
Literally: “study of place”
The story of the word
Johann Benedict Listing published Vorstudien zur Topologie in 1847, needing a name for geometry that throws away distance and keeps only connection. English adopted the word in the 1880s. τόπος, place, also gives topic, from the title of Aristotle's Τοπικά, and isotope, an element sitting in the same place on the periodic table, a coinage suggested to Frederick Soddy by the physician Margaret Todd in 1913.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → German coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
topicutopiaisotopetopography
In a sentence
In topology a coffee cup and a doughnut are the same object, because each has exactly one hole.