Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 ii Paper 4 16I Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
An aleph number is an infinite initial ordinal. More explicitly,for a limit ordinal . By the well-ordering theorem, every set is equipotent to an ordinal and hence to a unique initial ordinal. If the set is infinite, that initial ordinal occurs in the aleph enumeration. Thus every infinite set has cardinality for a unique ordinal .
We next prove the square of an infinite cardinal. Suppose otherwise and let be the least infinite cardinal for which . Well-order by increasingbreaking ties lexicographically. The predecessors of lie inside for some . If , then ; by minimality, when is infinite, while the finite case is immediate. Every proper initial segment therefore has cardinality less than .
Recursively assign to each pair the least ordinal below not already assigned to one of its predecessors. Such an ordinal always exists by the preceding bound, so this constructs an injection . The map gives the reverse injection, and the Cantor-Schröder-Bernstein theorem yields
For infinite , finitely many applications of the cardinal comparability principle let us choose of largest cardinality . Thenwhere the final equality follows from infinite cardinal arithmetic. Consequently
For a countable family of pairwise different infinite cardinalities, the answer is yes. Regard initial ordinals as sets and takeThe cardinalities are pairwise distinct, but every is a subset of . Hencewhich is the countable family of distinct infinite cardinalities with a largest member construction.