The Scottish Book

The second edition of this book updates and expands upon a historically important collection of mathematical problems first published in the United States by Birkhauser in 1981. These problems serve as a record of the informal discussions held by a group of mathematicians at the Scottish Cafe in Lwow, Poland, between the two world wars. Many of them were leaders in the development of such areas as functional and real analysis, group theory, measure and set theory, probability, and topology. Finding solutions to the problems they proposed has been ongoing since World War II, with prizes offered in many cases to those who are successful. In the 35 years since the first edition published, several more problems have been fully or partially solved, but even today many still remain unsolved and several prizes remain unclaimed. In view of this, the editor has gathered new and updated commentaries on the original 193 problems. Some problems are solved for the first time in this edition.