The ultrafilter: A peerless tool

Abstract

This is a translation into English of a paper written in French, published in Tatra Mountains Mathematical Publications, {L'ultrafiltre, un outil incomparable}, Tatra Mt. Math. Publ. {\bf 31} (2005), 131-176.It was also posted as {arXiv:math/0702587v1} [math.HO] 20 Feb 2007. This paper was meant for a series of talks at the Bratislava Workshop on the density concept, May 2004. A number of the very many facets of ultrafilters are reviewed (some of them, a bit cursorily, as is to be expected in a short space, and time) including Condorcet's Paradox, ultraproducts and the theory of infinitesimals (non-standard analysis), Banach generalized limits in sequence spaces, Choquet's limits for families of closed sets in general topology and intrinsic geometry, representations of topologies as binary relations among ultrafilters, additive bases in number theory.