From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/8172 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Robert Seely Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: RE: Jim Lambek Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 08:40:28 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Robert Seely NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=iso-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1403763916 31033 80.91.229.3 (26 Jun 2014 06:25:16 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 06:25:16 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Categories list To: =?ISO-8859-15?Q?Joyal=2C_Andr=E9?= Original-X-From: majordomo@mlist.mta.ca Thu Jun 26 08:25:10 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 1X037O-00069K-JD for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Thu, 26 Jun 2014 08:25:10 +0200 Original-Received: from mlist.mta.ca ([138.73.1.63]:45211) by smtp3.mta.ca with esmtp (Exim 4.80) (envelope-from ) id 1X0370-0008HZ-J6; Thu, 26 Jun 2014 03:24:46 -0300 Original-Received: from majordomo by mlist.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1X0372-0003Hc-2Z for categories-list@mlist.mta.ca; Thu, 26 Jun 2014 03:24:48 -0300 In-Reply-To: Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:8172 Archived-At: The story as told us by Jim one day was a little different, with some irony: He was one of the last "railway children", sent to England to escape the Nazis before the outbreak of WWII (there was a PBS documentary about this which prompted these reminiscences that day). He was among the older such "children" - about 16 - but made it anyway. A year or so later, on the outbreak of war or shortly thereafter, he was over 16, regarded as an enemy alien, and forcibly deported(!). He said he didn't know whether he was to be sent to Canada or Australia till after the ship set sail! Jim then commented that he might have become a 2-categorist!! As Andr\'e said, he started learning maths in the camp - even having a correspondance with Willard vO Quine while a prisoner - he'd read about Quine's NF and wanted to learn more about it. More about his early career may be read in Mike Barr's brief bio on the triples homepage (or in the TAC volume dedicated to him in 2000). He will be missed indeed. -= rags =- On Tue, 24 Jun 2014, Joyal, Andr? wrote: > I hope I can tell the story right: > Lambek immigrated from Germany to Canada just before WWII. > During the war, he was put in a concentration camp by the Canadian government > because he was German. But he was also a Jew. > He once told me that he began to learn mathematics in the camp. > > -Andr? Joyal > [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]