From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.science.mathematics.categories/9941 Path: news.gmane.org!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Ross Street Newsgroups: gmane.science.mathematics.categories Subject: Re: "First" use of 'Category theory' to describe our field Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2019 22:51:08 +0000 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: Ross Street Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Injection-Info: blaine.gmane.org; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:195.159.176.226"; logging-data="2317"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@blaine.gmane.org" Cc: "categories@mta.ca list" To: David Roberts Original-X-From: majordomo@mlist.mta.ca Fri Jul 12 21:42:24 2019 Return-path: Envelope-to: gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from smtp2.mta.ca ([198.164.44.55]) by blaine.gmane.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.89) (envelope-from ) id 1hm1R2-0000NM-LV for gsmc-categories@m.gmane.org; Fri, 12 Jul 2019 21:42:24 +0200 Original-Received: from mlist.mta.ca ([138.73.1.63]:34546) by smtp2.mta.ca with esmtp (Exim 4.80) (envelope-from ) id 1hm1Q6-0000hj-1E; Fri, 12 Jul 2019 16:41:26 -0300 Original-Received: from majordomo by mlist.mta.ca with local (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1hm1PI-0003Ab-To for categories-list@mlist.mta.ca; Fri, 12 Jul 2019 16:40:36 -0300 In-Reply-To: Accept-Language: en-GB, en-US Content-Language: en-US Precedence: bulk Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.science.mathematics.categories:9941 Archived-At: Dear David >From memory, the Pure Mathematics Honours (USyd) course that Max Kelly taug= ht in 1965 was called ``Category Theory''. It concentrated on different kinds of morph= isms and factorizations in a category, and finished with adjoint functors. Also John Gray's (UIllinois) 1968-69 graduate course had that name. >From Eilenberg I heard that each person using categories should have their = own category of expertise. I told this to John Gray who said that was fine; the time had come for that= category to be Cat. I would suggest that the first category theorists to think of themselves as= such were Eilenberg's students at Columbia. However, Mac Lane was definitely a category theorist. This is probably not the verifiable stuff you were seeking. Ross On 10 Jul 2019, at 10:01 PM, David Roberts > wrote: Hi all, the (idle) question is: when did the phrase 'category theory' catch on for the field? Clearly it didn't leap from either of the heads of Eilenberg or Mac Lane full-grown, since they used the phrase 'General theory of natural equivalences'. There are the old 'Reports of the Midwest Category Seminar' lecture notes (the first in 1967), which hints that 'category theory' wasn't quite the name in use. Even more interesting: who was the first "category theorist", by that name? Answers referring to verifiable sources would be best. Thoughts? David David Roberts Webpage: https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/David+Roberts Blog: https://thehighergeometer.wordpress.com [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]