The problem of metrization of topological spaces has had an enormous influence on the development of general topology. Singling out the basic topo logical components of metrizability has determined the main reference points in the construction of the classification of topological spaces. These are (pri marily) paracompactness, collectionwise normality, monotonic normality and perfect normality, the concepts of a stratifiable space, Moore space and u space, point-countable base, and uniform base. The method of covers has taken up a leading role in this classification. Of paramount significance...

Compactness is related to a number of fundamental concepts of mathemat ics. Particularly important are compact Hausdorff spaces or compacta. Com pactness appeared in mathematics for the first time as one of the main topo logical properties of an interval, a square, a sphere and any closed, bounded subset of a finite dimensional Euclidean space. Once it was realized that pre cisely this property was responsible for a series of fundamental facts related to those sets such as boundedness and uniform continuity of continuous func tions defined on them, compactness was given an abstract definition...