Fundamental Examples

Question

It is not unusual that a single example or a very few shape an entire mathematical discipline. Can you give examples for such examples? (One example, or few, per post, please)

I'd love to learn about further basic or central examples and I think such examples serve as good invitations to various areas. (Which is why a bounty was offered.)

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To make this question and the various examples a more useful source there is a designated answer to point out connections between the various examples we collected.

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In order to make it a more useful source, I list all the answers in categories, and added (for most) a date and (for 2/5) a link to the answer which often offers more details. (~year means approximate year, *year means a year when an older example becomes central in view of some discovery, year? means that I am not sure if this is the correct year and ? means that I do not know the date. Please edit and correct.) Of course, if you see some important example missing, add it!

Logic and foundations: $\aleph_\omega$ (~1890), Russell's paradox (1901), Halting problem (1936), Goedel constructible universe L (1938), McKinsey formula in modal logic (~1941), 3SAT (*1970), The theory of Algebraically closed fields (ACF) (?),

Physics: Brachistochrone problem (1696), Ising model (1925), The harmonic oscillator,(?) Dirac's delta function (1927), Heisenberg model of 1-D chain of spin 1/2 atoms, (~1928), Feynman path integral (1948),

Real and Complex Analysis: Harmonic series (14th Cen.) {and Riemann zeta function (1859)}, the Gamma function (1720), li(x), The elliptic integral that launched Riemann surfaces (*1854?), Chebyshev polynomials (?1854) punctured open set in C^n (Hartog's theorem *1906 ?)

Partial differential equations: Laplace equation (1773), the heat equation, wave equation, Navier-Stokes equation (1822),KdV equations (1877),

Functional analysis: Unilateral shift, The spaces $\ell_p$, $L_p$ and $C(k)$, Tsirelson spaces (1974), Cuntz algebra,

Algebra: Polynomials (ancient?), Z (ancient?) and Z/6Z (Middle Ages?), symmetric and alternating groups (*1832), Gaussian integers ($Z[\sqrt -1]$) (1832), $Z[\sqrt(-5)]$,$su_3$ ($su_2)$, full matrix ring over a ring, $\operatorname{SL}_2(\mathbb{Z})$ and SU(2), quaternions (1843), p-adic numbers (1897), Young tableaux (1900) and Schur polynomials, cyclotomic fields, Hopf algebras (1941) Fischer-Griess monster (1973), Heisenberg group, ADE-classification (and Dynkin diagrams), Prufer p-groups,

Number Theory: conics and pythagorean triples (ancient), Fermat equation (1637), Riemann zeta function (1859) elliptic curves, transcendental numbers, Fermat hypersurfaces,

Probability: Normal distribution (1733), Brownian motion (1827), The percolation model (1957), The Gaussian Orthogonal Ensemble, the Gaussian Unitary Ensemble, and the Gaussian Symplectic Ensemble, SLE (1999),

Dynamics: Logistic map (1845?), Smale's horseshoe map(1960). Mandelbrot set (1978/80) (Julia set), cat map, (Anosov diffeomorphism)

Geometry: Platonic solids (ancient), the Euclidean ball (ancient), The configuration of 27 lines on a cubic surface, The configurations of Desargues and Pappus, construction of regular heptadecagon (*1796), Hyperbolic geometry (1830), Reuleaux triangle (19th century), Fano plane (early 20th century ??), cyclic polytopes (1902), Delaunay triangulation (1934) Leech lattice (1965), Penrose tiling (1974), noncommutative torus, cone of positive semidefinite matrices, the associahedron (1961)

Topology: Spheres, Figure-eight knot (ancient), trefoil knot (ancient?) (Borromean rings (ancient?)), the torus (ancient?), Mobius strip (1858), Cantor set (1883), Projective spaces (complex, real, quanterionic..), Poincare dodecahedral sphere (1904), Homotopy group of spheres, Alexander polynomial (1923), Hopf fibration (1931), The standard embedding of the torus in R^3 (*1934 in Morse theory), pseudo-arcs (1948), Discrete metric spaces, Sorgenfrey line, Complex projective space, the cotangent bundle (?), The Grassmannian variety,homotopy group of spheres (*1951), Milnor exotic spheres (1965)

Graph theory: The seven bridges of Koenigsberg (1735), Petersen Graph (1886), two edge-colorings of K_6 (Ramsey's theorem 1930), K_33 and K_5 (Kuratowski's theorem 1930), Tutte graph (1946), Margulis's expanders (1973) and Ramanujan graphs (1986),

Combinatorics: tic-tac-toe (ancient Egypt(?)) (The game of nim (ancient China(?))), Pascal's triangle (China and Europe 17th), Catalan numbers (18th century), (Fibonacci sequence (12th century; probably ancient), Kirkman's schoolgirl problem (1850), surreal numbers (1969), alternating sign matrices (1982)

Algorithms and Computer Science: Newton Raphson method (17th century), Turing machine (1937), RSA (1977), universal quantum computer (1985)

Social Science: Prisoner's dilemma (1950) (and also the chicken game, chain store game, and centipede game), the model of exchange economy, second price auction (1961)

Statistics: the Lady Tasting Tea (?1920), Agricultural Field Experiments (Randomized Block Design, Analysis of Variance) (?1920), Neyman-Pearson lemma (?1930), Decision Theory (?1940), the Likelihood Function (?1920), Bootstrapping (?1975)

Answer 1

Spheres (of various dimensions) are the fundamental examples of (compact) Riemannian manifolds (or even Alexandrov spaces) of curvature > 0. Several major theorems of Riemannian geometry were motivated by the question of how to recognize a sphere. Most recently this culminated in Brendle and Schoen's proof of the differentiable sphere theorem.

Answer 2

The Newton-Raphson method. A method for finding successively better approximations to the zeroes of a real-valued function. See also this link.

Answer 3

The Prüfer p-group is a noteworthy example in the theory of Infinite Abelian Groups. (Answer by J. H. S.)

Answer 4

The Ising model (1925)

Answer 5

The symmetric and alternating groups are fundamental examples in group theory, representation theory, and combinatorics.

Answer 6

$\mathbb{Q}_{p}$. The field of p-adic numbers brings the study of local methods. Hensel's lemma is a great example. It is also interesting that p-adic integers is the projective limit of the rings $\mathbb{Z}/p^{n}\mathbb{Z}$.

Answer 7

The (complex analytic) proof of the Prime Number Theorem is the first major use of complex analysis to prove results about asymptotic behavior of prime numbers, which, at first glance, do not at all seem to be tied to complex numbers. This has led to an enormous amount of mathematics.

Answer 8

The field extension $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt[3]{2})/\mathbb{Q}$ is the most basic example of an algebraic extension which is not Galois. In particular, one notices that it has no non-trivial automorphisms, and that this is related to the fact that not enough of the roots of $x^3-2$ are in this field. This leads to the key concept of Galois extensions and the relation between automorphisms and roots. It also led Galois to develop the concept of normal subgroup.

Answer 9

The free group factors $L(\mathbb{F}_{n})$, which are the closer in the weak operator topology of the left regular representation of the free group $\mathbb{F}_n$, are fundamental examples in von Neumann algebras. The isomorphism question is the root of the so important Free Probability theory of Voiculescu.

Answer 10

The Thompson groups, as wikipedia said, have a collection of unusual properties which have made them counterexamples to many general conjectures in group theory. For example it is a finite generated finite presented torsion free group with infinite cohomology dimension. For more information see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thompson_groups

Answer 11

In $C^*$-algebras, the Cuntz Algebra is a fundamental example of a separable unital $C^*$-algebra. Its appearance has reshaped much of the theory of $C^*$-algebras.

Answer 12

The image of a torus embedded in $\mathbb{R}^3$ tilted on its side is the fundamental example of Morse Theory. In some sense it shows why you should "believe" all of the Morse lemmas before you sit down to prove them.

Answer 13

I think the question of whether or not $li(x) := \int_{2}^{x} \frac{dt}{\ln(t)}$ was contained in $\mathbb{C}\left(x, \ln\left(x\right)\right)$ spawned the field of galois theory of differential equations. One key question in this field, is what sort of extensions arise from adjoining solutions to a differential equation with coefficients in some ring (for example $\mathbb{C}(x)$?

In the case of the original question it can be posed as what extension arises from the differential equation $$\ln(x)y' = 1?$$

This field developed in parallel to galois theory of number fields (and other algebraic geometry, and arithmetic geometry). A good reference for the field is the aptly titled "Galois Theory of Linear Differential Equations" by Marius Van der Put and Michael Singer.

Answer 14

Theorem on Friends and strangers in Ramsey Theory.

Answer 15

Some of the examples above have indeed shaped whole "disciplines" but others, as striking as they are, are less sweeping in scope.

For me, a very important and thought provoking example, and historically important for a variety of reasons is the Tutte graph. This graph shows a 3-valent 3-polytopal graph which has no hamiltonian circuit. This example, in particular, doomed attempts to prove the 4-color theorem based on ideas related to hamiltonian circuits.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tutte_graph

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/TuttesGraph.html

It inspired a great variety of conjectures and work related to hamiltonian circuits for polytopes.

Answer 16

Three related fundamental examples in random matrix theory (in mathematical physics and probability) are the Gaussian Orthogonal Ensemble, the Gaussian Unitary Ensemble, and the Gaussian Symplectic Ensemble. Much of random matrix theory has been devoted to determining the properties of these families of random matrices and proving that other families exhibit the same behaviors.

Answer 17

Taking introductory topology, I got the impression that the real line is the fundamental example of a topological space. I wouldn't be surprised if the open and closed intervals of $\mathbb{R}$ were the prototypical examples of open and closed sets, and I think many important topological properties---including compactness, connectedness, and Hausdorffness---first arose because you need them to prove obvious facts about $\mathbb{R}$ and its subsets.

Answer 18

To make this question and the various examples a more useful source this is a designated answer to point out connections between the various examples we collected. please indicate only strong, definite, nontrivial, and clear connections.

1) The Petersen graph is obtained by identifying antipodal vertices and edges in the graph of the dodecahedron - one of the five platonic solids. Such an identification gives a polyhedral complex realizing the real projective plane. Applying this operation to the icosahedron leads to a 6-vertex triangulation of the real projective plane.

Answer 19

The cyclotomic field $\mathbb{Q}(\zeta_p)/\mathbb{Q}$ is the most basic example of a field extension in which splitting of primes depends on an obvious congruence condition. Specifically, if $\ell$ is another prime, then the Frobenius of $\ell$ is $\ell \mod p \in (\mathbb{Z}/p)^\times = \mathrm{Gal}(\mathbb{Q}(\zeta_p)/\mathbb{Q})$. In particular, $\ell$ splits in the field iff its Frobenius is trivial, and this is true iff $\ell \equiv 1 \mod p$. We can then relate other congruences to splitting in subfields of $\mathbb{Q}(\zeta_p)$, etc. The theorems of global class field theory show that this basic concept holds in a very general case, although the general case is much harder to prove. This basic example, does, however, motivate the ideas in class field theory, which have greatly influenced modern number theory and related areas. (As an added note, the fact that the Artin reciprocity law is true for cyclotomic fields is actually a key ingredient in the proof for general abelian extensions!)

Answered by Davidac897

Answer 20

The semicircular law and the Marchenko-Pastur distribution are fundamental examples of probability distributions in random matrix theory.

Answer 21

The hyperfinite $\mathrm{II}_1$ factor $\mathcal{R}$ and its ultrapower $\mathcal{R}^{\omega}$ are fundamental examples in von Neumann algebras and Connes' embedding problem.

Answer 22

The example that launched category theory: (co)homology, for example simplicial homology and Čech cohomology. The various maps linking (co)homology groups for different 'resolutions' of a topological space (by triangulation or open sets resp.) were I think the first examples of natural transformations. This necessitated defining functors, and hence defining categories.

Answer 23

Linear Algebra: In linear algebra the symmetric group $S_n=Bij(\{1,,n\})$ is a classical and important example if you learn basics in group theory.

Operator-algebra/ functional-analysis: Fundamental examples of $C^*$-algebras are $C(X)$ ( continuous functions on a compact Haudorff space X), $C_0(X)$ ( continuous functions vanishing at infinity on a localcompact Haudorff space X), $B(H)$ (bounded linear maps on a Hilbert space H). By Gelfand-Naimark you know a lot of abstract $C^*$algebras if you know these concrete examples.

Answer 24

In Combinatorics, the Dyck paths (systems of bracketings, theory of languages, group codes) and Motzkin paths (systems of bracketings, theory of languages, continued fractions). Particular cases of
Lattice paths.

Answer 25

Margulis's expanders: This class of 8 regular graphs is the first explicit example for a family of expanders. The vertices are pairs of integer modulo m, the neighbors of (x,y) are (x+y,y), (x-y,y), (x,y+x), (x,y-x), (x+y+1,y), (x-y+1,y), (x, y+x+1), (x,y-x+1). All operations are modulo m.

Expanders were first discovered and constucted probabilistically by Pinsker. The Ramanujan graphs of Lubotzky, Philips and Sarnak are expanders with extremely good properties. This paper by Hoory, Linial and Wigderson contains much more information.

Answer 26

The lady tasting tea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_tasting_tea was a fundamental example introducing the idea of significance tests.

Answer 27

The Hawaiian earring, the union of a null sequence of circles joined at a common point.

1) Shows that a connected, locally path connected metric space can fail to be locally contractible.

2) (Much less obvious). Amplifies the failure of TOP as the `correct' category in which to do algebraic topology. For example the fundamental group of the Hawaiian earring (with the natural quotient topology inherited from the space of based loops) fails to be a topological group in TOP.

(The true source of pathology is not the Hawaiian earring and its properties, but rather the general failure of quotients and products to commute in the category TOP, (i.e. the quotient of the product might not be the product of the quotients with standard definitions of topological quotients and topological products). Such discrepancy makes the case for the continued relevance of category theory.

Answer 28

Weierstrass's example of a continuous, nowhere differentiable real function -- apparently was a real surprise at the time and is still surprising to students.

Answer 29

The existence of dense open sets of small measure -- very counterintuitive and allows for all sorts of mischief.

Answer 30

In number theory: the diophantine equation

$a^2-b^3=c$.

This equation can be seen as an epitome of modern number theory, despite its deceptive simplicity.

This equation is not 'fully' understood to this day. But much about it is understood.

This equation is a recurring theme in the award-winning article

Graham Everest, Tom Ward: A Repulsion Motif in Diophantine Equations. The American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 118, no. 7, August-September 2011, pp. 584-598.