From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/7975 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Tadeusz Litak Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: Seeking a quote about 1930s algebraic topology Date: Thu, 09 Jan 2014 03:02:14 +0100 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Tadeusz Litak NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1389272880 7677 80.91.229.3 (9 Jan 2014 13:08:00 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 9 Jan 2014 13:08:00 +0000 (UTC) To: Colin McLarty , "categories@mta.ca" Original-X-From: majordomo@mlist.mta.ca Thu Jan 09 14:08:08 2014 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from smtp3.mta.ca ([138.73.1.186]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1W1FL9-0005LL-I8 for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Thu, 09 Jan 2014 14:08:03 +0100 Original-Received: from mlist.mta.ca ([138.73.1.63]:54788) by smtp3.mta.ca with esmtp (Exim 4.80) (envelope-from ) id 1W1FKK-0006Oa-TQ; Thu, 09 Jan 2014 09:07:12 -0400 Original-Received: from majordomo by mlist.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1W1FKJ-0006CF-17 for categories-list@mlist.mta.ca; Thu, 09 Jan 2014 09:07:11 -0400 In-Reply-To: Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:7975 Archived-At: On 1/5/14 5:02 PM, Colin McLarty wrote: > It seems to me I recall someone, maybe Eilenberg, saying they gave a talk > at Harvard in the 1930s on algebraic topology, where someone in the > audience said the subject had reached a level of complexity that it would > not be able to sustain. > > Can anyone here confirm that? Or can someone correct me by giving a > different story that I might have confused in my memory? It wasn't the audience of Eilenberg's talk, but the source of the story seems to be MacLane's paper about his work in topology. MacLane wrote tentatively this was said by somebody attending a talk by Tucker or perhaps Steenrod. See: http://eilenberg100.ptm.org.pl/sites/default/files/documents/the-work-of-samuel-eilenberg-in-topology.pdf Best wishes, t. [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]