History of CT meetings

History of CT meetings

[Peter Johnstone]

When the 100th PSSL meeting was held in Cambridge last year, I made
public the (almost) complete list of speakers and titles of talks at
PSSL meetings, which I've been keeping since they started. A number
of people suggested that it would be interesting to have a similar
list for the summer CT meetings. I'm afraid that compiling a full
list of speakers at such meetings would be beyond my resources, but
I thought it might be of interest to make a list of the dates and
locations of the meetings. So here is my first attempt at compiling
it; it's in the form of a plain TeX document, but should be easily
readable as text. At present it begins with the first Isle of Thorns
meeting in 1974, simply because that was the first such meeting that
I attended; information on earlier meetings, and corrections to the
information below, are very welcome.

Peter Johnstone

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

\centerline{\bf Category Theory Summer Conferences}

\bigskip
The following is intended to be a list of (mostly week-long) international
conferences organized by, and attended mainly or exclusively by,
category-theorists during the (northern) summer months (which I have
interpreted broadly as June to September, inclusive). Dates quoted are
arrival and departure dates: in most cases there were no lectures on the
arrival date, and in some there were none on the departure date. Unless
otherwise indicated, the official topic of the meeting was simply
`Category Theory' or something equivalent; the meetings with other
subjects are included because they were attended by a large proportion of
`the usual suspects'. For meetings organized under the aegis of a body not
solely devoted to category theory (MFI Oberwolfach, the London
Mathematical Society, MSRI etc.) the meeting venue is shown in square
brackets.
\bigskip

{\settabs\+worraw & worraworraworrawo & worraworrawo & worra\cr
\+Year & Place & Dates & Subject if not CT \cr
\+ & & \cr
\+1974 & Isle of Thorns & 27/7--2/8 & \cr
\+1974 & [Oberwolfach] & 3/8--9/8 & \cr
\+1975 & [Oberwolfach] & 29/6--5/7 & \cr
\+1976 & Isle of Thorns & 25/6--31/6 & \cr
\+1977 & [Durham] & 9/7--21/7 & Applications of Sheaves\cr
\+1977 & [Oberwolfach] & 31/7--6/8 & \cr
\+1979 & [Oberwolfach] & 8/7--14/7 & \cr
\+1980 & Amiens & 6/7--12/7 & (In memory of Ch.~Ehresmann)\cr
\+1980 & Ottawa & 10/8--16/8 & Categorical Topology \cr
\+1981 & Gummersbach & 5/7--10/7 & \cr
\+1981 & Cambridge & 19/7--25/7 & \cr
\+1982 & Isle of Thorns & 11/7--16/7 & \cr
\+1983 & [Oberwolfach] & 18/9--24/9 & \cr
\+1984 & Murten & 23/7--28/7 & \cr
\+1985 & Isle of Thorns & 14/7--19/7 & \cr
\+1985 & Bangor & 21/7--25/7 & Algebraic Homotopy Theory\cr
\+1986 & Cambridge & 20/7--26/7 & \cr
\+1987 & [Boulder] & 14/7--20/7 & Categories in Computer Science \&\
Logic\cr
\+1987 & Louvain-la-Neuve & 26/7--1/8 & \cr
\+1988 & Isle of Thorns & 10/7--15/7 & \cr
\+1988 & Praha & 21/8--27/8 & Categorical Topology\cr
\+1989 & Bangor & 3/7--7/7 & \cr
\+1990 & Como & 22/7--28/7 & \cr
\+1991 & [Durham] & 20/7--30/7 & Applications of Categories in Computer
Science\cr
\+1992 & Isle of Thorns & 12/7--17/7 & \cr
\+1993 & [MSRI] & 11/7--24/7 & Universal Algebra \&\ Category Theory \cr
\+1994 & Tours & 24/7--29/7 & \cr
\+1995 & Halifax & 9/7--15/7 & \cr
\+1995 & [Cambridge] & 6/8--12/8 & (part) Category Theory \&\ Computer
Science \cr
\+1996 & Isle of Thorns & 7/7--12/7 & \cr
\+1996 & Cape Town & 14/7--20/7 & (B.~Banaschewski 70th birthday) \cr
\+1997 & Vancouver & 13/7--19/7 & \cr
\+1999 & Coimbra & 18/7--24/7 & \cr
\+2000 & Como & 16/7--22/7 & \cr
\+2002 & Haute-Bodeux & 7/9--12/9 & (European meeting)\cr
\+2003 & [Toronto] & 22/9--28/9 & Categorical Structures for Descent \cr
\+2004 & Vancouver & 18/7--24/7 & \cr
\+2005 & Macquarie & 10/7--16/7 & (R.~Street 60th birthday)\cr
\+2006 & White Point & 25/6--1/7 & \cr
\+2007 & Carvoeiro & 17/6--23/6 & \cr
\+2008 & Calais & 22/6--28/6 & \cr
\+2009 & Cape Town & 28/6--4/7 & \cr
\+2010 & Genova & 20/6--26/6 & \cr
\+2011 & Vancouver & 17/7--23/7 & \cr
\+2012 & Coimbra & 8/7--14/7 & (G.~Janelidze 60th birthday) \cr
\+2013 & Macquarie & 7/7--13/7 & \cr
\+2014 & Cambridge & 29/6--5/7 & \cr
\+2015 & Aveiro & 14/6--20/6 & \cr
\+2016 & Halifax & 7/8--13/8 & \cr
\+2017 & Vancouver & 16/7--22/7 & \cr
}

\end



[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]

Re: History of CT meetings

[tholen]

Thanks, Peter, for compiling this list, this is great!

There were also "Kategorien" meetings at Oberwolfach in 1972 and 1973,
organized by John Gray and Horst Schubert, which were probably
instrumental in establishing the tradition of summer conferences in
category theory:

Oberwolfach, 23-29 July, 1972,
Oberwolfach, 22-28 July, 1973.

When leafing through the Oberwolfach archives (to recall the dates
above), to my surprise, I saw that there was also a summer conference
on "Kategorien und Funktoren" in 1966, organized by Albrecht Dold and
Saunders Mac Lane(!):

Oberwolfach, 17-23 July, 1966.

This was just one year after the 1965 La Jolla meeting, probably to be
considered the first major international conference on category theory
ever. In Aveiro (CT2015) we acknowledged the 50th anniversary of that
pivotal conference.

With the help of all readers of the list (and perhaps by leafing
through old Springer Lecture Notes), it should be possible to close the
information gap in the open interval (1966,1972).

Walter






Quoting Peter Johnstone <ptj@dpmms.cam.ac.uk>:

> When the 100th PSSL meeting was held in Cambridge last year, I made
> public the (almost) complete list of speakers and titles of talks at
> PSSL meetings, which I've been keeping since they started. A number
> of people suggested that it would be interesting to have a similar
> list for the summer CT meetings. I'm afraid that compiling a full
> list of speakers at such meetings would be beyond my resources, but
> I thought it might be of interest to make a list of the dates and
> locations of the meetings. So here is my first attempt at compiling
> it; it's in the form of a plain TeX document, but should be easily
> readable as text. At present it begins with the first Isle of Thorns
> meeting in 1974, simply because that was the first such meeting that
> I attended; information on earlier meetings, and corrections to the
> information below, are very welcome.
>
> Peter Johnstone
>
> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
>

[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]

Re: History of CT meetings

[Robert Seely]

Thanks Peter, and now Walter too, for this list - there cannot be a lot of entries still to add, but there's one I'd like to see.  

I was going to add mention myself of the Séminaire de Mathématiques Supérieures (Université de Montréal) meeting in spring-early summer 1974, entitled "Méthodes catégoriques en logique mathématique et en théorie des automates", under the nominal direction of S. Takahashi.  At this meeting important series of talks (virtually summer-school-type introductions, combined with state-or-the-art research talks) by Benabou, Joyal, Freyd, Reyes, and many others, made this meeting ground-breaking I think - one might regard it as the "coming of age" of the marriage of logic and categories begun by Bill Lawvere (who I am pretty sure was there too, but my memory is poor after all this time!) less than a decade earlier.  (Much as the Boulder meeting was often regarded in a similar light for the connections between categories and computer science.)

But sadly, I cannot give the exact dates (May or June '74?) for that meeting.  I kept a student's diary at the time, but seem to have lost it, so have  no records myself to base this information on.  Surely someone can help with this?

  -= rags =- 

----- Original Message -----
From: tholen@mathstat.yorku.ca
To: "Peter Johnstone" <ptj@dpmms.cam.ac.uk>
Cc: "Categories mailing list" <categories@mta.ca>, tholen@mathstat.yorku.ca
Sent: Monday, June 12, 2017 3:45:46 PM
Subject: categories: Re:  History of CT meetings

Thanks, Peter, for compiling this list, this is great!

There were also "Kategorien" meetings at Oberwolfach in 1972 and 1973,
organized by John Gray and Horst Schubert, which were probably
instrumental in establishing the tradition of summer conferences in
category theory:

Oberwolfach, 23-29 July, 1972,
Oberwolfach, 22-28 July, 1973.

When leafing through the Oberwolfach archives (to recall the dates
above), to my surprise, I saw that there was also a summer conference
on "Kategorien und Funktoren" in 1966, organized by Albrecht Dold and
Saunders Mac Lane(!):

Oberwolfach, 17-23 July, 1966.

This was just one year after the 1965 La Jolla meeting, probably to be
considered the first major international conference on category theory
ever. In Aveiro (CT2015) we acknowledged the 50th anniversary of that
pivotal conference.

With the help of all readers of the list (and perhaps by leafing
through old Springer Lecture Notes), it should be possible to close the
information gap in the open interval (1966,1972).

Walter






Quoting Peter Johnstone <ptj@dpmms.cam.ac.uk>:

> When the 100th PSSL meeting was held in Cambridge last year, I made
> public the (almost) complete list of speakers and titles of talks at
> PSSL meetings, which I've been keeping since they started. A number
> of people suggested that it would be interesting to have a similar
> list for the summer CT meetings. I'm afraid that compiling a full
> list of speakers at such meetings would be beyond my resources, but
> I thought it might be of interest to make a list of the dates and
> locations of the meetings. So here is my first attempt at compiling
> it; it's in the form of a plain TeX document, but should be easily
> readable as text. At present it begins with the first Isle of Thorns
> meeting in 1974, simply because that was the first such meeting that
> I attended; information on earlier meetings, and corrections to the
> information below, are very welcome.
>
> Peter Johnstone
>
> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
>


[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]

Re: History of CT meetings

[Andrée Ehresmann]

Among earlier CT meetings I would also mention several meetings of which
the abstracts and/or Proceedings are published in the "Cahiers":

I. Four international CT meetings organized by our Amiens-Paris team TAC
in:

     = Amiens 1973: Abstracts in "Cahiers"
http://www.numdam.org/item/CTGDC_1973__14_2_153_0
     = Amiens 1975: Abstracts in "Cahiers"
http://www.numdam.org/item/CTGDC_1975__16_3_217_0
     = Chantilly 1975: Abstracts in
http://www.numdam.org/item/CTGDC_1975__16_4_425_0
     = Amiens 1980 (at the memory of Charles Ehresmann): Program in
http://www.numdam.org/item/CTGDC_1980__21_4_343_0
     and the Proceedings of which are published in the
"Cahiers" Volumes XXI-4 (1980), XXII-1 to 4 (1981), XXIII-1AA-2 (1982).


II. An International CT meeting in Tours (organized by Damphousse and
Guitart). Proc. in
"Cahiers" Volume XXXIII-3 (1992).

There is also the regular "Seminaire Itinerant de Categories" organized
since 1994; cf. its site
http://www-lmpa.univ-littoral.fr/~sic/wordpress/?page_id=96

Sincerely
                 Andree



[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]

Re: History of CT meetings

[Peter Johnstone]

Dear Robert,

Yes, I was aware of the 1974 Montreal seminar. But I think it falls
outside my self-imposed restriction of including only meetings
held during the summer months (June to September). So too do
the Aarhus `Open House' meetings of 1973 and 1977, since they were
both in May; and the Dalhousie meeting of 1971 which produced SLN 274,
since that was in January.

I've added to the list the earlier Oberwolfach meetings quoted by Walter,
the La Jolla meeting (7-12 June 1965), the Z\"urich meeting of the
Midwest Category Seminar (24-30 August 1970), and the l'Aquila workshop
on categorical topology (31 August-4 September 1994) which I had
overlooked because I didn't attend it.

Best regards,
Peter

On Tue, 13 Jun 2017, Robert Seely wrote:

> Thanks Peter, and now Walter too, for this list - there cannot be a lot of entries still to add, but there's one I'd like to see.
>
> I was going to add mention myself of the Séminaire de Mathématiques Supérieures (Université de Montréal) meeting in spring-early summer 1974, entitled "Méthodes catégoriques en logique mathématique et en théorie des automates", under the nominal direction of S. Takahashi.  At this meeting important series of talks (virtually summer-school-type introductions, combined with state-or-the-art research talks) by Benabou, Joyal, Freyd, Reyes, and many others, made this meeting ground-breaking I think - one might regard it as the "coming of age" of the marriage of logic and categories begun by Bill Lawvere (who I am pretty sure was there too, but my memory is poor after all this time!) less than a decade earlier.  (Much as the  Boulder meeting was often regarded in a similar light for the connections between categories and computer science.)
>
> But sadly, I cannot give the exact dates (May or June '74?) for that meeting.  I kept a student's diary at the time, but seem to have lost it, so have no records myself to base this information on.  Surely someone can help with this?
>
> -= rags =-
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: tholen@mathstat.yorku.ca
> To: "Peter Johnstone" <ptj@dpmms.cam.ac.uk>
> Cc: "Categories mailing list" <categories@mta.ca>, tholen@mathstat.yorku.ca
> Sent: Monday, June 12, 2017 3:45:46 PM
> Subject: categories: Re:  History of CT meetings
>
> Thanks, Peter, for compiling this list, this is great!
>
> There were also "Kategorien" meetings at Oberwolfach in 1972 and 1973,
> organized by John Gray and Horst Schubert, which were probably
> instrumental in establishing the tradition of summer conferences in
> category theory:
>
> Oberwolfach, 23-29 July, 1972,
> Oberwolfach, 22-28 July, 1973.
>
> When leafing through the Oberwolfach archives (to recall the dates
> above), to my surprise, I saw that there was also a summer conference
> on "Kategorien und Funktoren" in 1966, organized by Albrecht Dold and
> Saunders Mac Lane(!):
>
> Oberwolfach, 17-23 July, 1966.
>
> This was just one year after the 1965 La Jolla meeting, probably to be
> considered the first major international conference on category theory
> ever. In Aveiro (CT2015) we acknowledged the 50th anniversary of that
> pivotal conference.
>
> With the help of all readers of the list (and perhaps by leafing
> through old Springer Lecture Notes), it should be possible to close the
> information gap in the open interval (1966,1972).
>
> Walter
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Quoting Peter Johnstone <ptj@dpmms.cam.ac.uk>:
>
>> When the 100th PSSL meeting was held in Cambridge last year, I made
>> public the (almost) complete list of speakers and titles of talks at
>> PSSL meetings, which I've been keeping since they started. A number
>> of people suggested that it would be interesting to have a similar
>> list for the summer CT meetings. I'm afraid that compiling a full
>> list of speakers at such meetings would be beyond my resources, but
>> I thought it might be of interest to make a list of the dates and
>> locations of the meetings. So here is my first attempt at compiling
>> it; it's in the form of a plain TeX document, but should be easily
>> readable as text. At present it begins with the first Isle of Thorns
>> meeting in 1974, simply because that was the first such meeting that
>> I attended; information on earlier meetings, and corrections to the
>> information below, are very welcome.
>>
>> Peter Johnstone
>>
>> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
>>


[For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]