Re: A well kept secret?

[Vaughan Pratt <pratt@cs.stanford.edu>]

KCHM wrote:
> For the record, there was a course in category theory for undergraduates
> at Monash University (Melbourne) in the early 1970s.

The (a?) counterpart of this at Berkeley at the start of the 1970s was
Ed Spanier's algebraic topology course, whose first lecture would begin
by exhibiting a functor between two categories, I forget which (I was
not then at all into categories) but perhaps Top and Grp, and giving a
two-line proof (of a representation?) to make the point that category
theory could be a powerful tool when expertly deployed.

I mention this because the experience at the UACT conference in 1993 at
MSRI on the hill overlooking Berkeley rather created the impression that
Berkeley would be the last place to welcome category theory,
particularly when then-director of MSRI Bill Thurston welcomed us all at
the opening of the meeting with his announcement that the very thought
of the opposite of a category made him ill.  Such an opening remark
would be more appropriately made about CO2 at the currently running
conference in Copenhagen.

Vaughan


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