Re: Chalkfinger

["Ernie Manes" <manes@mtdata.com>]

I remember the skit well, because it named my thesis advisor-to-be after
his somewhat oriental looks as Lin Ton.  That puts the skit as the year
Fred spent many months at Chicago which was the year before the Bowdoin
conference on homological algebra which was held in the summer of 1965 as
an NSF summer Advanced Seminar.  It was at the seminar that I first met
Fred and I did not meet him the previous year precisely because he was at
Chicago.

    Ernie Manes


----- Original Message -----
From: "Prof. Peter Johnstone" <P.T.Johnstone@dpmms.cam.ac.uk>
To: "Categories mailing list" <categories@mta.ca>
Sent: Monday, December 05, 2005 9:10 AM
Subject: categories: Chalkfinger


> Peter Freyd's recent posting of the `Categories Anonymous' skit
> prompted me to dig out and transcribe an even older skit which
> originated with the Chicago Junior Math Club, and which stars
> Saunders Mac Lane as the evil villain Chalkfinger. I don't know its
> exact date: it should be datable by the reference at the end to
> Chalkfinger's visit to Japan, but although Saunders refers to that
> visit in his autobiography (p. 297) he doesn't quote the date. The
> typescript copy which I have (and which I acquired from Murray
> Adelman in 1984) was apparently revised for performance
> at the Bowdoin Summer Advanced Seminar in Homological Algebra (again,
> I don't know the year). If anyone knows more details of the history
> of the skit, I'd be interested to hear them.
>
> Peter Johnstone
>