In topology, a proximity space, also called a nearness space, is an axiomatization of the intuitive notion of "nearness" that hold set-to-set, as opposed to the better known point-to-set notion that characterize topological spaces.
The concept was described by Frigyes Riesz (1909) but ignored at the time.[1] It was rediscovered and axiomatized by V. A. Efremovič in 1934 under the name of infinitesimal space, but not published until 1951. In the interim, A. D. Wallace (1941) discovered a version of the same concept under the name of separation space.