[FOM] question about Boolean algebras

[Robert Black]

See Peter T. Johnstone - *Stone Spaces* (CUP 1982), the introductory 
section entitled 'Stone's Theorem in historical perspective.'. Tarski 
and Lindenbaum proved in 1935 that a boolean algebra is isomorphic to 
the algebra of all subsets of some set if and only if it is complete 
and atomic.

Robert

>Does any fom-er know the answer to the following historical question?
>
>I would like to know who might have been earlier than Stone ('The
>theory of representations for Boolean algebras', Trans. AMS, 40, 1936, pp.
>37-111) in proving that every finite Boolean algebra is isomorphic to the
>Boolean algebra of all subsets of some set. Theorem 12 of that paper (on
>p.52) is "A finite Boolean ring with at least two elements contains an
>atomic basis S and is therefore isomorphic to the algebra of all
>subclasses of a finite class Sigma in one-to-one correspondence with S."
>(At this point in Stone's paper there is no historical reference that
>would tell the reader whether the result had been established before. So I
>should imagine this was the first proof of the result in question. But I
>would like to verify priority.)
>
>Neil Tennant
>
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Robert Black
Dept of Philosophy
University of Nottingham
Nottingham NG7 2RD

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