every reasonably written history of mathematics makes a clear point of emphasizing cantor's jewish identity see for example carl boyer's competent study wherein it is cantor's father is a convert and his mother having gentile origins historiography is not as straight forward as the amateur historians herein would purport to assert one has to put cantor in the context of the period in jewish history in which he lived cantor lived at the time when the failed german jewish symbiosis was still believed possible it was a time when the poet heinrich heine could and did assert that conversion to christianity was his entry ticket to german society the same is also manifestly true of cantor