Re: "First" use of 'Category theory' to describe our field

["La Monte H. P. Yarroll" <piggy.yarroll@gmail.com>]

There's a nice Wikipedia article on "General Abstract Nonsense", but not on
the more formal name.

On Fri, Jul 12, 2019, 3:45 PM Ross Street <ross.street@mq.edu.au> wrote:

> Dear David
>
> From memory, the Pure Mathematics Honours (USyd) course that Max Kelly
> taught in 1965
> was called ``Category Theory''. It concentrated on different kinds of
> morphisms
> 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 <droberts.65537@gmail.com
> <mailto:droberts.65537@gmail.com>> 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
>

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