From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/5333 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Robert Seely Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: re: A well kept secret Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2009 00:23:06 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Robert Seely NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1260321829 17062 80.91.229.12 (9 Dec 2009 01:23:49 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2009 01:23:49 +0000 (UTC) To: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Joyal=2C_Andr=E9?= , Original-X-From: categories@mta.ca Wed Dec 09 02:23:42 2009 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from mailserv.mta.ca ([138.73.1.1]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1NIBHJ-0002ba-Rm for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:23:42 +0100 Original-Received: from Majordom by mailserv.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.61) (envelope-from ) id 1NIArQ-0006UK-Kb for categories-list@mta.ca; Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:56:56 -0400 Original-Sender: categories@mta.ca Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:5333 Archived-At: Well, we might not say that, but Voevodsky did. Link on the triples page: http://www.math.mcgill.ca/triples/ (or directly http://claymath.msri.org/voevodsky2002.mov) where he says "Categories: one of the most important ideas of 20th century mathematics". BTW - the Farmelo book, The Strangest Man, is one I recommend to my students - it's well worth looking at. But one thing that struck me was how *little* Farmelo plays the "strange man" theme - Dirac was indeed strange, but that's not what makes him worth reading about, nor was it what made him a great theoretician. Farmelo doesn't (IMO) make the same mistake so many documentary producers do ... -=3D rags =3D- On Mon, 7 Dec 2009, Joyal, Andr=E9 wrote: > Category theory is a powerful mathematical language. > It is extremely good for organising, unifying and suggesting new direct= ions of research. > It is probably the most important mathematical developpement of the 20t= h century. > > But we cant say that publically. > > Andr=E9 Joyal [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]