August 2021 - Categories - categories.org.au

Re: "First" use of 'Category theory' to describe our field
by David Roberts 24 Feb '24

24 Feb '24

Dear Ross, no, that's pretty good! It's mildly surprising that it took ~20 years for the name to 'stick', but maybe less so given that the field grew slowly to start. Thanks, David David Roberts Webpage: https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/David+Roberts Blog: https://thehighergeometer.wordpress.com On Thu, 11 Jul 2019 at 08:21, Ross Street <ross.street(a)mq.edu.au> wrote: > > Dear David > > From memory, the Pure Mathematics Honours (USyd) course that Max Kelly taught in 1965 > was called ``Category Theory''. It concentrated on different kinds of morphisms > and factorizations in a category, and finished with adjoint functors. > Also John Gray's (UIllinois) 1968-69 graduate course had that name. > > From Eilenberg I heard that each person using categories should have their own category of expertise. > I told this to John Gray who said that was fine; the time had come for that category to be Cat. > > I would suggest that the first category theorists to think of themselves as such were Eilenberg's students at Columbia. > However, Mac Lane was definitely a category theorist. > > This is probably not the verifiable stuff you were seeking. > > Ross > > > On 10 Jul 2019, at 10:01 PM, David Roberts <droberts.65537(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi all, > > the (idle) question is: when did the phrase 'category theory' catch on > for the field? Clearly it didn't leap from either of the heads of > Eilenberg or Mac Lane full-grown, since they used the phrase 'General > theory of natural equivalences'. There are the old 'Reports of the > Midwest Category Seminar' lecture notes (the first in 1967), which > hints that 'category theory' wasn't quite the name in use. > > Even more interesting: who was the first "category theorist", by that name? > > Answers referring to verifiable sources would be best. > > Thoughts? > > David > > > > David Roberts > Webpage: https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/David+Roberts > Blog: https://thehighergeometer.wordpress.com > [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]

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Call for Participation - International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP 2021)
by Miguel Areias 31 Aug '21

31 Aug '21

CAUTION: The Sender of this email is not from within Dalhousie. ========================================================================= ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????? CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ========================================================================= The 37th International Conference on Logic Programming (ICLP 2021) https://iclp2021.dcc.fc.up.pt/ ========================================================================= The virtual edition of ICLP 2021 will run from September 20 until September 27, 2021. The conference will be held online and we strongly encourage all interested people to register to access the event and interact with other participants. The registration conditions are available at https://iclp2021.dcc.fc.up.pt/index.html#registration The main program is available at https://iclp2021.dcc.fc.up.pt/index-program.html This year's edition includes five outstanding talks by William Cohen (Google AI), John Hooker (CMU), Phokion Kolaitis (UC Santa Cruz and IBM Almaden), Stuart Russell (UC Berkeley) and Jeff Ullman (Stanford University) https://iclp2021.dcc.fc.up.pt/index.html#keynotes and eight affiliated events https://iclp2021.dcc.fc.up.pt/index.html#affiliatedevents Looking forward to meet you in the ICLP 2021 virtual conference. Miguel Areias (on behalf of ICLP 2021 Chairs). ========================================================================= Any additional question can be directed towards ICLP 2021 Chairs: iclp2021(a)easychair.org ========================================================================= [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]

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Special online YaMCATS, 14 September 2021
by simona.paoli＠virgilio.it 26 Aug '21

26 Aug '21

CAUTION: The Sender of this email is not from within Dalhousie. Dear All, there will be a special online meeting of the Yorkshire and Midlands Category Seminar (YaMCATS) on 14 September 2021. The invited speakers are: Caterina Consani (Johns Hopkins University) Andre Joyal (UQAM) Peter May (University of Chicago) This will be my last meeting as coordinator of the YaMCATS network, since I am moving to the University of Aberdeen from 1 September 2021. We will circulate the information about the schedule, Zoom link etc. closer to the time of the meeting. We look forward to meeting you online ! Best wishes, Simona (with Nicola Gambino and Steve Vickers). [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]

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Novemberfest
by Richard Blute 25 Aug '21

25 Aug '21

CAUTION: The Sender of this email is not from within Dalhousie. Category Theory Virtual Novemberfest 2021 Friday-Sunday, November 12-14 Preliminary Announcement The 2021 Category Theory Novemberfest will be held on the weekend of Friday, November 12th through Sunday, November 14th. The meeting will be virtual. Following the tradition of past Octoberfests, this is intended to be an informal meeting, covering all areas of category theory and its applications. Talks by PhD students and young researchers are particularly encouraged! If interested in speaking, please send title and abstract to Rick Blute at rblute(a)uottawa.ca<mailto:rblute@uottawa.ca> by October 20. More details soon. [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]

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Em-Cats seminar series announcement
by Tim Hosgood 21 Aug '21

21 Aug '21

CAUTION: The Sender of this email is not from within Dalhousie. I hope this message finds you all well. The Topos Institute is very excited to announce a new seminar series: Em-Cats. This public series of virtual seminars is being launched after careful thought and planning by Eugenia Cheng, with the aim of helping the next generation of category theorists to become wonderful speakers, as well as to offer opportunities to graduate students in places where there is not a category theory group or local seminar that they can usefully speak in. The seminars will be held monthly, but do not have a regular schedule, so that speakers from different time zones can give their talk at a time that best suits them. The first talk will be on the 25th of August, at 17:00 UTC, when Jade Master is going to talk about the Universal Property of the Algebraic Path Problem (the abstract for which can be found at the end of this message). The seminar will be chaired by Martin Hyland, and will be moderated by Eugenia Cheng. We encourage all members of the community to come and listen, and to be involved in the question and social sessions after the talk. For more information, including links to the Zoom meeting and the YouTube livestream, please see the webpage: https://topos.site/em-cats <https://topos.site/em-cats> . Have a nice weekend, and we look forward to seeing you all on the 25th! Best, Tim Hosgood (Research affiliate, Topos Institute) tim(a)topos.institute <mailto:tim@topos.institute> ——— Jade Master: Universal Property of the Algebraic Path Problem The algebraic path problem generalizes the shortest path problem, which studies graphs weighted in the positive real numbers, and asks for the path between a given pair of vertices with the minimum total weight. This path may be computed using an expression built up from the "min" and "+" of positive real numbers. The algebraic path problem generalizes this from graphs weighted in the positive reals to graphs weighted in an arbitrary commutative semiring R. With appropriate choices of R, many well known problems in optimization, computer science, probability, and computing become instances of the algebraic path problem. In this talk we will show how solutions to the algebraic path problem are computed with a left adjoint, and this opens the door to reasoning about the algebraic path problem using the techniques of modern category theory. When R is "nice", a graph weighted in R may be regarded as an R-enriched graph, and the solution to its algebraic path problem is then given by the free R-enriched category on it. The algebraic path problem suffers from combinatorial explosion so that solutions can take a very long time to compute when the size of the graph is large. Therefore, to compute the algebraic path problem efficiently on large graphs, it helps to break it down into smaller sub-problems. The universal property of the algebraic path problem gives insight into the way that solutions to these sub-problems may be glued together to form a solution to the whole, which may be regarded as a "practical" application of abstract category theory. [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]

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Looking for contact address for Yves Diers
by Nathanael Arkor 17 Aug '21

17 Aug '21

CAUTION: The Sender of this email is not from within Dalhousie. Dear all, I am looking to get in touch with Yves Diers regarding his work. However, the email address I have found (diers(a)univ-valenciennes.fr) no longer works, and I have been unable to find a more recent address. If anyone has an up-to-date contact address for him, I would be very grateful if you could share it with me privately (assuming he would be happy for you to do so). Thank you very much, Nathanael Arkor [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]

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Unity of Mathematics
by Venkata Rayudu Posina 10 Aug '21

10 Aug '21

CAUTION: The Sender of this email is not from within Dalhousie. Dear All, I hope and pray you and your families are all well. Following in the footsteps of late Professor Charles Ehresmann (1966), who suggested that category theory--in light of its unifying mathematical concepts and constructions--should be taught as early as linear algebra, I made a case for learning and teaching category theory beginning with pre-university in our Science eLetter: Universal yearning for understanding https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6537/36/tab-e-letters Your time permitting, please critique. I look forward to your corrections of any mistakes I might have made in my characterization of category theory. Thanking you, posina Ehresmann, C. (1966) Trends toward unity in mathematics, Cahiers de Topologie et Géométrie Différentielle Catégoriques 8: 1-7. http://www.numdam.org/article/CTGDC_1966__8__A1_0.pdf [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]

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