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Concept
Zorn's lemma
Summary
Zorn's lemma, also known as the Kuratowski–Zorn lemma, is a proposition of set theory. It states that a partially ordered set containing upper bounds for every chain (that is, every totally ordered subset) necessarily contains at least one maximal element.
The lemma was proved (assuming the axiom of choice) by Kazimierz Kuratowski in 1922 and independently by Max Zorn in 1935. It occurs in the proofs of several theorems of crucial importance, for instance the Hahn–Banach theorem in functional analysis, the theorem that every vector space has a basis, Tychonoff's theorem in topology stating that every product of compact spaces is compact, and the theorems in abstract algebra that in a ring with identity every proper ideal is contained in a maximal ideal and that every field has an algebraic closure.
Zorn's lemma is equivalent to the well-ordering theorem and also to the axiom of choice, in the sense that within ZF (Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory without the axiom of choice) any one of the three is sufficient to prove the other two. An earlier formulation of Zorn's lemma is Hausdorff's maximum principle which states that every totally ordered subset of a given partially ordered set is contained in a maximal totally ordered subset of that partially ordered set.
To prove the existence of a mathematical object that can be viewed as a maximal element in some partially ordered set in some way, one can try proving the existence of such an object by assuming there is no maximal element and using transfinite induction and the assumptions of the situation to get a contradiction. Zorn's lemma tidies up the conditions a situation needs to satisfy in order for such an argument to work and enables mathematicians to not have to repeat the transfinite induction argument by hand each time, but just check the conditions of Zorn's lemma.
If you are building a mathematical object in stages and find that (i) you have not finished even after infinitely many stages, and (ii) there seems to be nothing to stop you continuing to build, then Zorn’s lemma may well be able to help you.
Official source
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