Cantor spent his career at the University of Heidelberg, where he began as a tutor in 1853. His first important book was Mathematische Beiträge zum Kulturleben der Völker (1863; “Mathematical Contributions to the Cultural Life of the People”). It was followed by his Vorlesungen über Geschichte der Mathematik (“Lectures on the History of Mathematics”), the first volume of which was published in 1880, the second in 1892, and the third in successive parts between 1894 and 1896. By this time Cantor was too old to undertake the fourth volume; consequently, the work was divided among nine men under his editorship and was finished in 1908. Considered one of the finest published histories of mathematics, the work traces mathematical development from earliest times up to 1799.

Between 1856 and 1898 Cantor wrote a number of papers that were published chiefly in the Zeitschrift für Mathematik und Physik (“Journal of Mathematics and Physics”), of which he was an editor.