Re: Bourbaki and Categories

["George Janelidze" <janelg@telkomsa.net>]

Dear Andree,

Could you please explain this better?:

The only Bourbaki member I new personally was Sammy Eilenberg. As many of
us, I knew him very well and I would say that he was more skeptical about
the Bourbaki Tractate then one can conclude from Andre's message. Having in
mind not just this but the content of Bourbaki's "Homological algebra" and
what we see today from the followers of that Bourbaki group, I protest
against Andre's "two options" and I insist that Bourbaki group simply did
not see the importance of category theory (in spite of being brilliant
mathematicians, as I said in my previous message). I hope Andre will forgive
me and even agree with me.

However, there were three great category-theorists in that group (plus there
is this mysterious story about Chevalley's book of category theory lost in
the train), and "did not see" cannot be said about them of course. On the
other hand I have never heard of any joint work of Charles Ehresmann with
any of the two others, Eilenberg and Grothendieck (and nothing jointly from
them). I think apart from the time issues you describe, the relationship
between Bourbaki Tractate and category theory should have been determined by
their separate or joint influence and therefore also by their communication
with each other (if any).

Is this true, and could you please give details?

Respectfully, and with best regards-

George