CAUTION: The Sender of this email is not from within Dalhousie. I don’t think I ever met Tom Fox, but I do remember Dusko Pavlovic telling me in 2005 about Tom’s phd work, and that work ended up being vital for the development of categorical quantum mechanics, ZX-calculus, DisCoCat, QNLP, and all the other stuff that has `spiders’. Thank you Thomas.
On 9 Oct 2021, at 19:02, Joyal, André <joyal.andre@uqam.ca> wrote:
It is a great sorrow to announce that Thomas Fox died home October 2 with the loving care of his wife Giovanna Carnevale.
Thom was a category theorist, a teacher and a singer.
He got his Phd from McGill University under the supervision of Michael Barr. He was a pionner in the application of categorical methods to deformation theory:
https://www.math.mcgill.ca/fox/papers.html
He taught at Dawson College and at McGill University, where he received the Principal's Prize for his teaching:
https://reporter.mcgill.ca/thomas-fox-earns-mcgill-medal-for-lifelong-commit...
His teaching was very highly rated by his students at Dawson:
https://space.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/explorations/article/interview_tom_fox
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2331051666
He enjoyed singing in many languages including Italian, French and Russian:
https://www.math.mcgill.ca/fox/
I remember well the reception that Thom and Giovanna held at their place at the occasion of a category theory Octoberfest: Michael Barr, Jon Beck, Denis Higgs, Jim Lambek, Bill Lawvere, Michael Makkai, Barry Mitchell, Susan Niefield, Robert Paré, Gonzalo Reyes, Bob Rosebrugh, Myles Tierney and Don Van Osdol were there, to name a few.
Thom will be missed.
André
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