From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/8171 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Bob Coecke Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Jim Lambek Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 12:18:19 +0100 Message-ID: Reply-To: Bob Coecke NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v1283) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1403763860 30498 80.91.229.3 (26 Jun 2014 06:24:20 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 06:24:20 +0000 (UTC) To: categories@mta.ca Original-X-From: majordomo@mlist.mta.ca Thu Jun 26 08:24:14 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 1X036T-0005Pd-Me for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Thu, 26 Jun 2014 08:24:13 +0200 Original-Received: from mlist.mta.ca ([138.73.1.63]:45204) by smtp3.mta.ca with esmtp (Exim 4.80) (envelope-from ) id 1X0361-000883-3h; Thu, 26 Jun 2014 03:23:45 -0300 Original-Received: from majordomo by mlist.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1X0362-0003G8-Ev for categories-list@mlist.mta.ca; Thu, 26 Jun 2014 03:23:46 -0300 Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:8171 Archived-At: It was my great luck to have known Jim Lambek quite well for the past 15 = years. =20 Of course, Jim was the first one to identify categorical structures in = the `real world', in the form of the structure of grammar with his 1956 = paper, and as already mentioned by Andre, he pioneered many branches of = category theory, such as categorical logic and coalgebra. =20 But even more so, Jim Lambek was also lots of fun! He didn't take = himself over-seriously, loved to have a laugh at the pub, and was always = in for a genuinely funny joke during talks. When he first heard about = dagger categories in a talk (which are monoidal categories with an = involution, something which he himself considered way before), he asked = how one was able to take these on a plane. He prides himself in that his = greatest scientific contribution was the introduction of the symbol R = for a ring, replacing the impossible to draw gothic symbols. =20 Unlike some in category theory land, he had a genuine interest in other = sciences and actively contributed to them. One of the most striking = things is probably that in mathematical/computational linguistics his = pioneering contributions span well over 50 years, with the release of = his book on pregroup grammars in 2007, which have now meanwhile found = there way into mainstream natural language processing. The past few = years he was working on physics related topics and he had asked me to = take care of his papers getting publicised in the event of what just = happened. While the passing of a friend is of course extremely sad, Jim was a very = happy person and has enjoyed an extremely exciting and colourful life, = and oh boy it was fun having had a small part in that! [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]