Re: Introductory books on category theory
Hello. Let me give you my suggestions. I'm still newbie to this fascinating area, but here goes the books I've been reading, by order of preference: - Michael Barr and Charles Wells, "Category Theory for Computing Science", Prentice-Hall; - Michael Arbib and Ernest Manes, "Arrows, Structores, and Functors", Academic Press; - Saunders Mac Lane, "Categories for the Working Mathematician", Springer-Verlag; - David Pitt et al, "Category Theory and Computer Programming", Springer-Verlag. This last item is the proceedings of tutorial and workshop, containing both very introductory and accessible papers, and research work. Possibly the choice of these books reveals some bias I have towards computer science. Cheers, -- *** Rodrigo Martins de Matos Ventura <yoda@isr.ist.utl.pt> *** Web page: http://www.isr.ist.utl.pt/~yoda *** Teaching Assistant and PhD Student at ISR: *** Instituto de Sistemas e Robotica, Polo de Lisboa *** Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisboa, PORTUGAL *** PGP fingerprint = 0119 AD13 9EEE 264A 3F10 31D3 89B3 C6C4 60C6 4585
recommendations for introductory books on category theory.
Practical Foundations of Mathematics, Cambridge University Press, 1999 I can't think who the author might be :-) My web pages at http://www.dcs.qmw.ac.uk/~pt/book include an 18-page summary of the entire contents, along with an exceedingly primitive HTML translation of the text (which was intended to feed the creepy crawlies that infest the Web). Paul
Hello Richard Dybowski and others, rd> In particular, what is your opinion of "Conceptual Mathematics: A First Introduction to Categories" by Lawvere and Schanuel? I purchased the book early in 1998 and have worked through about 2/3 of it in "spare time". In summation it is good ---comparable in quality to many modern texts for 1st and 2nd year maths courses. You probably can not find a better introduction to the subject. As with most books by one or two authors there are a few ambiguities and snags, terminology used without definition for example. If you study the book and encounter a snag send a message and I can try to help. Regards, peter_easthope@gulfnet.sd64.bc.ca
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Paul Taylor -
peter_easthopeļ¼ gulfnet.sd64.bc.ca -
Rodrigo Ventura