Dear Jean, Here is what seems to be my 14th letter to you in this connection. It is a friendly reminder that I did not "support" Peter Johnstone. Here is an extract at the end of my November 4 official intervention ("Response to Benabou") in categories.
It seems then to be an error on the part of Peter Johnstone to have attributed Proposition 1.5.5 in E1 (page 297) to Beck and not to Benabou and Roubaud. At the end of this section on "Descent Conditions and Stacks" (page 303), the references given in El 1 are Bourn, Bunge and Pare, Giraud, Grothendieck, Reiterman and Tholen, but curiously enough, not Benabou-Roubaud. I am sure that Peter will repair this error should a second edition of the Elephant ever appear.
In fact, I do not think that Peter Johnstone "supports" himself in this matter -- he has admitted the error. What more do you want him to say? However, in view of the evidence, provided by Street and Lawvere, of the possibility that Jon Beck may have discovered this theorem independently and even talked about it, as the abstract in the Notices of the AMS (1967) seems to indicate, it seems fair after all to add his name to yours in connection with it. It is common pratice in mathematics to give credit for ideas disseminated at lectures, even more so if these ideas are mentioned in an abstract. This does not take away your own credit. This is my very last letter on the subject, private or official. With best wishes, Marta ************************************************ Marta Bunge Professor Emerita Dept of Mathematics and Statistics McGill University 805 Sherbrooke St. West Montreal, QC, Canada H3A 2K6 Office: (514) 398-3810 Home: (514) 935-3618 marta.bunge@mcgill.ca http://www.math.mcgill.ca/~bunge/ ************************************************
From: JeanBenabou <jean.benabou@wanadoo.fr> To: Categories <categories@mta.ca> Subject: categories: References Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2007 00:28:50 +0100
Dear colleagues,
I have had, so far, no less than 22 answers to my mail about references for the "Beck" theorem mentioned in the Elephant, all of them supporting Peter Johnstone. An I am not counting "references" which "referred" to other "reliable references" such as Dusko Pavlovic an Claudio Hermida in one of the THIRTEEN mails sent by Marta Bunge! I intend to answer in detail to all these mails. It might take a few days, because I don't have such a powerful team helping me in my research: bibliography, recollections, etc. It takes ALL of my time, 12 hours a day, but I enjoy EVERY MINUTE OF IT. I congratulate Peter Johnstone to have such a numerous and faithful army of supporters. But as you say in English: "The more the merrier". So Johnstone might use the delay before my answer to find a few dozen more supporters. It will make me even more happy, and I'm afraid he will need ALL the support he can get!
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