I attended the Bowdoin Summer Seminar as a 2nd year math grad student with some training in math logic and none in category theory. MacLane gave the principal lectures (later developed into his CWM) and others (Eilenberg, Isbell) weighed in with lectures on special topics. A few points stick in memory. For instance, Eilenberg lectured on his categorical treatment of abstract machine theory. At one point he was analyzing the words generated by a set of symbols A, and he derived that I+A+A^2+... = [I-A]^-1 with such flourish that a spontaneous applause broke out in the audience. Otherwise, Eilenberg along with Lawvere and Tierney played poker and smoked cigars with great relish. In one lecture on some of Linton's results, MacLane presented a picture of an Australian road sign for the town of "Colinton" which MacLane said was named after Linton's antipodal dual. Foreign (i.e., non-North-American) category theorists were represented by (at least) Eduardo Dubuc and Sabah Fakir. I don't know about "Phreilambud" but I suspect the "bud" is from Eisenbud who mentions in his Preface to MacLane's mathematical autobiography that Bowdoin was the only time he saw "Saunders and Sammy" together and that all gathered around when they discussed the origins of the subject one evening after dinner. These were early days in the so-called 'foundations' debate with set theory where the latter was represented at Bowdoin by Feferman. I suspect that many of the arguments expressed in Feferman's 1977 article (which Colin recently described as "the most sustained critique of categorical foundations to date" [Phil. Math. 2005]) were hammered out at Bowdoin. The last session of the seminar was called the "prayer meeting" where various people were asked to "let their hair down" and talk informally about the future of CT and foundations. I was the symbolic grad student asked to say a few words and I was so nervous I don't remember what the others said! I made a few (certainly elementary and perhaps incoherent) remarks on the difference between sets as (non-self-participating) universals for a property in contrast with the (self-participating) universals (UMPs) of CT which in some sense exemplify the property they represent (ideas developed years later in an article on "concrete universals" and CT in Erkenntnis 1988). The final social event was a feast of Maine lobsters at a nearby beach presided over by MacLane and Dorothy. As we were devouring our lobsters, I particularly remember MacLane shouting out to all assembled: "Don't eat the green stuff, don't eat the green stuff!" (a reference to lower part of the lobster's alimentary canal). _____________________ David Ellerman Visiting Scholar University of California at Riverside Mailing address: 4044 Mt Vernon Ave Riverside, CA 92507 Email: david@ellerman.org Webpage: www.ellerman.org View my research on my SSRN Author page: http://ssrn.com/author=294049 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Colin McLarty" <colin.mclarty@case.edu> To: <categories@mta.ca> Sent: Sunday, October 02, 2005 8:00 PM Subject: categories: Phreilambud at Bowdoin 1969
I am interested in any stories about the 1969 Summer Institute at Bowdoin. Who was there?
In particular,the Reports of the Midwest Category Seminar IV (SLN 137) has a humor piece written as a ``final exam'' for the Institute. It is signed ``Phreilambud.'' Who is this? I can make it up out of various people's names, but I don't know who was there.
Colin