Excerpt from my memorial address for Saunders MacLane, about events around 1971 or 1972: There is a terminological comment in Categories for the Working Mathematician that I especially like and would like to share with you. It concerns the substitution of monad for triple as the name of a concept that all mathematicians here should know. He writes “The frequent but unfortunate use of the word ‘triple’ in this sense has achieved a maximum of needless confusion, what with the conflict with ordered triple, plus the use of associated terms such as ‘triple derived functors’ for functors which are not three times derived from anything in the world. Hence the term ‘monad’.” One reason I like this passage is that it is a beautiful illustration of the vividness of his writing, his sheer verve. Another is that it is so characteristic of his manner of arguing a point. But the third is personal. In the first draft he used the word triple, and I won him over. I had just defined operads, and I had coined that word to go well with monad. ---------- You're receiving this message because you're a member of the Categories mailing list group from Macquarie University. Leave group: https://outlook.office365.com/owa/categories@mq.edu.au/groupsubscription.ashx?source=EscalatedMessage&action=leave&GuestId=6bf90c14-94d1-45b7-a0b5-9dd447734d27