The story
These numbers were introduced by the 19th-century mathematician Johann Benedict Listing, and later given this name by Charles Sanders Peirce.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Listing number
Today it means: Any of four topological invariants associated with a topological space. The smallest Listing number counts the number of connected components of a space, and is thus equivalent to the zeroth Betti number. Full definition →