This account of the History of General Topology has grown out of the
special session on this topic at the American Mathematical Soeiety
meeting in San Antonio, Texas, 1993. It was there that the idea grew to
publish a book on the historical development of General Topology.
Moreover it was feit that it was important to undertake this project
while topologists who knew some of the early researchers were still
active. Since the first paper by Frechet, "Generalisation d'un theoreme
de Weier- strass", C.R.Acad. Sei. 139, 1904, 848-849, and Hausdorff's
c1assic book, "Grundzüge der Mengenlehre", Leipzig, 1914, there have
been numerous de- velopments in a multitude of directions and there have
been many interactions with a great number of other mathematical fields.
We have tried to cover as many of these as possible. Most contributions
concern either individual topologists, speeific schools, speeific
periods, speeific topics or a combination of these.