> > I am fully aware that Jean was a controversial figure in his days. > > Could you indicate what controversy this was? It started before I got into categorical circles in the mid 80s. Some of its traces can be found on the categories list. One of the visible expressions is Jean's 1985 JSL article where he devotes 2 pages explaining why his work was superior to the one of Par'e and Schumacher in a way much more explicit than usual. As I understand it he presented his work 1974 in lectures of at Montreal. A couple of years later Pare and Schumacher came up with their long article phrasing things in the language of indexed cats. Jean complained about certain defects of the latter approach. But as I understand he was essentially upset that they published his material before him. But he definitely was a perfectionist and the writing of the book was never finished. That is the impression of a person who was not involved those days and just knows things from rumour and what people said. I know Jean as a very polite person but also that under certain circumstances he could easily "explode". I heard him talk the first time at Logic Colloquium in Firenze in 1982 where he gave a very condensed version of his later JSL article including the controversy. I noticed that there was an obvious tension in the room. But I didn't care and rather got curious about fibered categories. I received very early a copy of Roisin's handwritten notes which I read with great delight. Over the years I got into it more and more and finally when asked to lecture on it in Munich in 1999 I strated to prepare some notes for myself in order to not forget about material which was not easily available. For me it is an indispensible tool for doing category theory over arbitrary base toposes. Your question shows that a younger generation of category theorists is not aware of those things. In a sense this is good so and normal since it allows to look at things in a more objective way. But since this material was never really published and the copies I provided are not of the best quality (see https://www2.mathematik.tu-darmstadt.de/~streicher/FibCatTexts/) I think it would be a service to the community to have them available in more readable form. Whether it is necessary to translate them I am not so sure. In any case I am not interested in heating up an old and by now dead conflict. My intention just is to preserve important work for future generations since I found reading it most delightful. I was told to make an official submission but could not find any form for that. Rather have the impression that these things are decided by some responsible board. It is their decision but it might be helpful to express on the cat-list whether one is interested in the preservation of this material. Just to find out whether it is worth the effort to retype those things. Thomas You're receiving this message because you're a member of the Categories mailing list group from Macquarie University. To take part in this conversation, reply all to this message. View group files | Leave group | Learn more about Microsoft 365 Groups