Hi David, Could you point me to some papers on this? (both yours and Reshtikhin/Turaev) I'm particularly interested in the "early" history of string diagrams (i.e. between Penrose 71 and J&S 91) and diagrammatic notation in general. Best, Aleks On 13 June 2013 18:55, David Yetter <dyetter@math.ksu.edu> wrote:
I'm pleased to see the items quoted from Coecke include "string diagrams" as they are now called.
Although they occur first in Kelly and Laplaza's paper on coherence for compact closed categories, and again in Street's work with Joyal in the mid-80's, I think I was the first person to use them, in public at least, in the form with "coupons" (to borrow the term Reshtikhin and Turaev used a few months later) to represent maps which aren't inherent in the (braided or symmetric compact closed) monoidal structure.
Best Thoughts, David Y.
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