Jim Lambek

Jim Lambek

[Jean Bénabou]

Many persons before me have talked about Jim as a mathematician, and of his important contributions in many domains of mathematics, there is not much I can add on this subject.

I met him for the first time in the winter of 1966-67. I was visiting Chicago for the academic year, and he invited me at Mac Gill for few days to give lectures at the category seminar. At that time he was already a well known mathematician with important contributions. But at that first meeting I discovered the man. A man with a vast culture in many non mathematical domains, a lot of personal charm, a big sense of humor, full of life and love of life.

I met him a countless number of times, in Montreal which I visited very often, in Paris where he attend my seminar and gave a few talks, and in many conferences, and my first impression was confirmed and deepened. 

As all of us, I shall miss him.

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Jim Lambek

[Bob Coecke]

It was my great luck to have known Jim Lambek quite well for the past 15 years.  

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.  

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.  

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!



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Re: Jim Lambek

[Fred E.J. Linton]

Probably this sad news --

> Subject: categories: Jim Lambek
>
> I regret to inform you all that Jim died this afternoon. ...

-- was only to be expected, but it caught me by surprise, anyway,
for at his U of M "90th" birthday party last fall he seemed still
very much alive and perky. As that was to be the last time I'd
see him again, I'm very glad I took part there. And I'm so shaken
by this loss, I can't find words. Jim, we'll all miss you.

-- Fred Linton



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Jim Lambek

[Michael Barr]

I regret to inform you all that Jim died this afternoon.  His son says it 
was congestive heart failure which is as good a way as any to describe 
dying of old age.  He was still coming to seminar last fall and celebrated 
his 91st birthday in December in pretty good shape, but has been gradually 
going downhill since.  I don't believe he came to the office since late 
fall.  He had a good run.

Michael


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RE: Jim Lambek

[Joyal, André]

Jim Lambek was the founder of the Montreal school of category theory. 
He made many foundamental contributions to algebra, category theory and categorical logic. 
His paper on multicategories and deductive systems is marking the birth of linear logic.
Let me point out that his notion of muticategory is more general than that of operad introduced later by others. 
I often use his elegant theorem on the initial algebra of an endofunctor. 


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.

-André Joyal

________________________________________
From: Michael Barr [barr@math.mcgill.ca]
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2014 9:55 PM
To: Categories list
Subject: categories: Jim Lambek

I regret to inform you all that Jim died this afternoon.  His son says it
was congestive heart failure which is as good a way as any to describe
dying of old age.  He was still coming to seminar last fall and celebrated
his 91st birthday in December in pretty good shape, but has been gradually
going downhill since.  I don't believe he came to the office since late
fall.  He had a good run.

Michael


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RE: Jim Lambek

[Robert Seely]

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
>

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Re: Jim Lambek

[Aleks Kissinger]

I only met Jim Lambek for the first time last year, but consider
myself lucky to have gotten the chance to meet one of the most
creative people, and biggest personalities, in the field. I'm sure he
will be sorely missed.


Aleks

On 24 June 2014 02:55, Michael Barr <barr@math.mcgill.ca> wrote:
> I regret to inform you all that Jim died this afternoon.  His son says it
> was congestive heart failure which is as good a way as any to describe
> dying of old age.  He was still coming to seminar last fall and celebrated
> his 91st birthday in December in pretty good shape, but has been gradually
> going downhill since.  I don't believe he came to the office since late
> fall.  He had a good run.
>
> Michael
>

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Re: Jim Lambek

[Dana Scott]

On Jun 24, 2014, at 2:55 AM, Michael Barr <barr@math.mcgill.ca> wrote:

> I regret to inform you all that Jim died this afternoon.  His son says it
> was congestive heart failure which is as good a way as any to describe
> dying of old age.  He was still coming to seminar last fall and celebrated
> his 91st birthday in December in pretty good shape, but has been gradually
> going downhill since.  I don't believe he came to the office since late
> fall.  He had a good run.
>
> Michael

So sad to hear!  Phil Scott, Mike Fourman, and I were just together
here in Edinburgh yesterday, where I gave a colloquium.  We were
remembering old times and mentioned Jim Lambek especially.  Please
convey our sincere condolences to the family.

 	-- Dana Scott


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Re: Jim Lambek

[René Guitart]

Cher Michael,
 	Je suis très touché par ce si triste événement, et je te prie de présenter mes condoléances à la famille de Jim, à ses élèves, à ses amis. 
 	Dans les années 1970 il a donné à Paris des cours lumineux que les jeunes gens de ma génération ont suivi avec délice,
y apprenant son style si transparent de clarté algébrique. Apprenant par exemple ce qu'est vraiment le calcul polynomial (et partant sa présentation du lambda-calcul).
Je me souviens aussi, un peu plus tard, de sa construction de l'adjonction entre les Dog et les Cat (dogmas and categories).
 	Bien sûr il a contribué décisivement à nombre de domaines mathématiques, logique et linguistique aussi. C'était non seulement un grand mathématicien, mais aussi un homme courtois et très  attentif aux autres. Lors de mon dernier voyage à Montréal en 1998 ou 1999 je crois, il avait organisé une séance de Séminaire pour que je puisse y parler, alors que l'année académique était déjà terminée.  A ce moment là le soir nous avions reparlé de ses  très  jolies papiers sur la grammaire latine, sur la grammaire française, dont il m'avait donné des années avant les preprints. Ce fut la dernière fois que je le vis.
 	Bien amicalement,
René.
    
Le 24 juin 2014 à 03:55, Michael Barr a écrit :

> I regret to inform you all that Jim died this afternoon.  His son says it 
> was congestive heart failure which is as good a way as any to describe 
> dying of old age.  He was still coming to seminar last fall and celebrated 
> his 91st birthday in December in pretty good shape, but has been gradually 
> going downhill since.  I don't believe he came to the office since late 
> fall.  He had a good run.
> 
> Michael



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RE: Jim Lambek

[Tierney, Myles]

I just wanted to add a note of sadness at Jim's death.
He was someone I knew well, with pleasure, for almost
fifty years. His death was not a surprise, we are all
headed that way, but it still a nasty shock when it
happens. He will leave a hole in Category Theory, and
in our lives.

Myles Tierney

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