"Julius Wilhelm Richard Dedekind stands out as one of the most prominent contributors of the 19th century to the theory of algebraic numbers. He wrote various important memoirs on the binomial equation and on the theory of modular and Abelian functions, but is best known for his treatises Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen? (1888) and Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen (1872). In the latter work he set forth his idea of the Schnitt (cut) in relation to irrational numbers,—an idea he had in mind as early as 1858."