Dear all, I was wondering if anyone here might be able to provide some additional historical context for a passage in Stanisław Ulam's autobiography "Adventures of a Mathematician", where he talks about his Master's thesis at the Lwów Polytechnic Institute:
I worked for a week on the thesis, then wrote it up in one night, from about ten in the evening until four in the morning, on my father's long sheets of legal paper. I still have the original manuscript. (It is unpublished to this day.) The paper contains general ideas on the operations of products of sets, and some of it outlines what is now called Category Theory.
Without wanting to read too much into his offhand remark, I'm curious about what he was talking about. I noticed that the Wikipedia article on Category theory also alludes to this but does not elaborate or give references. ("Stanislaw Ulam, and some writing on his behalf, have claimed that related ideas were current in the late 1930s in Poland.") According to the information I found online, the Stanislaw M. Ulam Papers are stored in the American Philosophical Society library in Philadelphia, and include copies of both his Master's thesis in Polish titled "O operacje produkto" as well as a 1973 English translation "On the operation of product". But I was not able to find digital copies of these. Is anyone familiar with the contents of the thesis and can suggest what Ulam was referring to by "outlines" of category theory? Or do you know if Ulam wrote about category theory elsewhere, or if he had any significant interactions with category theorists? this is just for curiosity, but thanks in advance for any leads! Noam You're receiving this message because you're a member of the Categories mailing list group from Macquarie University. To take part in this conversation, reply all to this message. View group files<https://outlook.office365.com/owa/categories@mq.edu.au/groupsubscription.ashx?source=EscalatedMessage&action=files&GuestId=6bf90c14-94d1-45b7-a0b5-9dd447734d27> | Leave group<https://outlook.office365.com/owa/categories@mq.edu.au/groupsubscription.ashx?source=EscalatedMessage&action=leave&GuestId=6bf90c14-94d1-45b7-a0b5-9dd447734d27> | Learn more about Microsoft 365 Groups<https://aka.ms/o365g>