Re: A well kept secret?

[KCHM <K.Mackenzie@sheffield.ac.uk>]

On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 03:30:30PM -0800, peasthope@shaw.ca wrote:

> ... but how prevalent is the
> subject in undergraduate programs?

For the record, there was a course in category theory for undergraduates
at Monash University (Melbourne) in the early 1970s. This was in the third
year of what, for people interested in mathematics, was usually a four-year
degree. It was taught by G B Preston, as in `algebraic theory of semigroups'
using MacLane and Birkhoff (1967, not Birkhoff and MacLane). It partly took
the line that category theory unified the basic algebraic and topological
constructions and partly that it was a subject to study in its own right.

Students then were simultaneously being taught the general Tichonoff theorem
using ultrafilters, smooth manifolds and multilinear algebra (more universal
constructions, as in Greub), and Hilbert space theory. This provided a strong
context for category theory.

Heady days.

Kirill

-- 
=====================================
http://kchmackenzie.staff.shef.ac.uk/
=====================================


[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]