Re: Albrecht Dold, R.i.P.

[Ronnie Brown <ronnie.profbrown@btinternet.com>]

Two major things I learned from Albrecht Dold. One was the Dod-Kan 
theorem, on the equivalence between chain complexes and simplicial 
abelian groups, which was a major input to my doctoral thesis on the 
finding k-invariants  of function spaces; and second,  when in the 1960s 
he was lecturing at Liverpool on half-exact functors, I realised that 
for publication purposes on this material,  I could cut out long and  
detailed formulae for a homotopy equivalence making a diagram 
commutative, since its existence followed from naturality!

Both of these aspects have continued to influence my work on crossed 
complexes and nonabelian algebraic topology.

Ronnie

On 07/10/2011 14:15, Andreas Blass wrote:
> Albrecht Dold taught the algebraic topology course that I took in my first year as a graduate student.  His beautifully organized presentation of this material was largely responsible for my becoming interested in category theory.  He made both the power and the beauty of functors evident.
>
> Andreas Blass
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
>> From: "Fred E.J. Linton"<fejlinton@usa.net>
>> Date: 6 October, 2011 9:13:26 PM EDT
>> To: "categories"<categories@mta.ca>
>> Subject: categories: Albrecht Dold, R.i.P.
>> Reply-To: "Fred E.J. Linton"<fejlinton@usa.net>
>>
>>  From today's IMU newsletter:
>>
>> | 6. DEATH OF ALBRECHT DOLD ON 26-09-2011.
>> |
>> | Albrecht Dold, known for fundamental contributions to algebraic
>> | topology, was born in Germany in 1928. He held positions in Heidelberg,
>> | Zürich, Princeton and Columbia. He has been Vice-president of IMU in
>> 1995-98.
>>
>> I particularly mourn his passing, as it was Dold's algebraic topology
>> lectures at Columbia around 1961 (+/- 1) that taught me virtually all
>> I know, or would ever learn later, about the Yoneda Lemma.
>>
>> Born August 5, 1928, in Triberg, Germany, and barely a teenager during
>> WW II, Dold would have been 83 at the time of his death.
>>
>> -- Fred

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