Dear Ross,
no, that's pretty good! It's mildly surprising that it took ~20 years
for the name to 'stick', but maybe less so given that the field grew
slowly to start.
Thanks,
David
David Roberts
Webpage:
https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/David+Roberts
Blog:
https://thehighergeometer.wordpress.com
On Thu, 11 Jul 2019 at 08:21, Ross Street <
ross.street@mq.edu.au> wrote:
>
> Dear David
>
> From memory, the Pure Mathematics Honours (USyd) course that Max Kelly taught in 1965
> was called ``Category Theory''. It concentrated on different kinds of morphisms
> and factorizations in a category, and finished with adjoint functors.
> Also John Gray's (UIllinois) 1968-69 graduate course had that name.
>
> From Eilenberg I heard that each person using categories should have their own category of expertise.
> I told this to John Gray who said that was fine; the time had come for that category to be Cat.
>
> I would suggest that the first category theorists to think of themselves as such were Eilenberg's students at Columbia.
> However, Mac Lane was definitely a category theorist.
>
> This is probably not the verifiable stuff you were seeking.
>
> Ross
>
>
> On 10 Jul 2019, at 10:01 PM, David Roberts <
droberts.65537@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> the (idle) question is: when did the phrase 'category theory' catch on
> for the field? Clearly it didn't leap from either of the heads of
> Eilenberg or Mac Lane full-grown, since they used the phrase 'General
> theory of natural equivalences'. There are the old 'Reports of the
> Midwest Category Seminar' lecture notes (the first in 1967), which
> hints that 'category theory' wasn't quite the name in use.
>
> Even more interesting: who was the first "category theorist", by that name?
>
> Answers referring to verifiable sources would be best.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> David
>
>
>
> David Roberts
> Webpage:
https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/David+Roberts
> Blog:
https://thehighergeometer.wordpress.com
>
[For admin and other information see:
http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]