History of Mathematics

After 1700
HPS391 / MAT391
Lindsey Shorser ( lshorser@math.toronto.edu )

Week 5 - Part 3
and
Week 6 - Part 1
Mathematical Categories
• A set of mathematical objects that all share a set of
properties (e.g., a set of groups, a set of vector spaces,
etc.)

• A set of morphisms (a.k.a., maps, functions, etc.) that

take one element to another in a structure-preserving way

• You can study the category of groups to learn something

about groups, etc.

• This is another level of abstraction on top of Noether’s

program
 n-Categories

• A category can also be called a 1-category

• A set of categories with morphisms between

them (called “functors”) is a 2-category.

• A set of n-1-categories with morphisms between

them is called an n-category
The origin of categories

• First introduced by Eilenberg and Mac Lane in

1945 in their paper “General Theory of Natural
Equivalences”

• a continuation of the trend towards abstraction

that started in Göttingen with Noether and
Hilbert
 Nicolas Bourbaki
• The most famous mathematician to never live

• Published some of the most famous

mathematical textbooks, mostly published
between 1930 and 1970, but still continues to
publish today

• The surname of a French General from the

1800s
 The Bourbaki Group
• set out to write text books from which to teach,
goal evolved into the re-formulation of all of
mathematics in set-theoretic terms

• Weil and Chevalley wanted French mathematics

to integrate the best ideas of Göttingen, and
specifically Hilbert and the modern algebraic
legacy of Noether, Artin (her collaborator), and
van der Waerden (her former student)
• first meeting was arranged by André Weil in 1934 (on Dec 10 in a
restaurant in Paris while everyone was in town for a conference)

• tried to create set theoretic underpinnings for all of mathematics

• introduced the current standards for rigour (possibly in reaction to

Henri Poincaré's intuition-based stream of consciousness writing)

• original members included: Henri Cartan, Claude Chevalley, Jean

Coulomb, Jean Delsarte, Jean Dieudonné, Charles Ehresmann,
René de Possel, Szolem Mandelbrojt, and André Weil

• later members included: Hyman Mass, Laurent Schwartz, Jean-

Pierre Serre, Alexander Gothendieck, Jean-Louis Koszul, Samuel
Eilenberg, Serge Lang, and Roger Godement

• members were expected to resign when they turned 50

• the group produced ten texts called Elements de Mathematique

• also ran a seminar where members were tasked with making sense
of current new mathematics and teach everyone else about it

• based out of École Normale Supérieure in Paris

• Originally, they wrote six texts (in French, also translated to English
and other languages): Set Theory, Algebra, Topology, Functions of
one real variable, Topological vector spaces, and Integration

• Later, they added texts on: Commutative algebras, Lie groups and
algebras, Spectral theory, and Algebraic topology

• also Variétés différentielles et analytiques was a summary of results

on the theory of manifolds
• the group (and whomever is in it now) continues
to publish texts as well as papers from their
seminar group

• Bourbaki developed the symbol for empty set

that we use today (Ø), the dangerous bend
symbol, and the terms injective, surjective, and
bijective.

• unofficial motto: "Death to triangles!" or "Morts

aux triangles"
 Influence and Issues

• had immediate impact on education (through the

textbooks)

• immediately influential on the fields most closely

related to their interests

• furthered the trend towards rigour and

abstraction, gaining publicity for this “cause”
• geometry and analysis are generally done with
less abstraction than the Bourbaki approach

• since the 1970s, publications have been more

sporadic, less encompassing of current trends,
and completely lacking in category theoretic
material resulting in diminished influence of
Bourbaki on modern mathematics

• their standards of rigour have become mostly

universal (reflecting the trend of the time?
causing the trend?)
• topics suspiciously absent from Bourbaki's
publications: much of analysis, partial differential
equations (PDEs), probability, combinatorics,
algebraic topology, concrete geometry, mathematical
logic, symbolic logic, mathematical physics

• algorithms are not treated as a topic

• no applications are considered

• generally criticized for reducing all of geometry to

abstract algebra and soft analysis, with little visual
(pictorial) representations in their work
 Samuel Eilenberg
(1913-1998)
• born in Warsaw, Poland where he stayed until
the end of his PhD under Karol Borsuk

• spent most of his career after that at Columbia

Univserity in New York

• mostly worked in algebraic topology

• worked with Norman Steenrod to create the

Eilenberg-Steenrod axioms of homology theory
• was a member of Bourbaki

• in 1956 wrote the book "Homological Algebra"

with Henri Cartan (generally considered a main
reference for the field)

• contributed to automata theory and algebraic

automata theory as well, but worked mostly with
categories
 Saunders Mac Lane
(1909-2005)
• born in Connecticut, USA

• originally Leslie Saunders MacLane

• his father died when he was in high school and went to live with his
grandfather

• his uncle paid his way to Yale University, where many of his relatives had gone

• became interested in mathematics in university (Yale) when he was convinced

to train for a local math competition and won it

• received (at the time) an unprecedentedly high grade point average

• went to U of Chicago for a master's degree and Göttingen for his PhD (studied
under Bernays, Weyl, Hegoltz, and Noether)
• graduated in 1934, just as the Nazis were forcing
professors out of the school

• held short term appointments at Yale, Harvard, Cornell,

and U of Chicago

• worked on applied math for the war effort (wWII), mostly

differential equations for fire-control systems

• politically involved (VP of National Academy of Sciences,

VP of American Philosophical Society, president of the
American Mathematical Society, member of National
Science Board for US government)

• cared deeply about math education

• worked mostly in field and valuation theory, then
group extensions, then what we call Eilenberg-
MacLane spaces, leading to the development of
group cohomology

• originated category theory with Eilenberg in

1945

• attributed with the modern use of graph

diagrams ("diagram chasing") for working with
abstract objects (the vertices) and their
morphisms (the edges)
 Where did categories come
from?
• It is possible to trace back Eilenberg's influence to
Bourbaki and Mac Lane's influence to his time at
Göttingen (also an influence on Bourbaki)

• Concerned with structure preserving maps, abstract

algebra, and continuing Noether's and Hilbert's program
to learn about specific problems through abstraction

• Not formulated in terms of set theory, thereby

independent of Bourbaki's attempts to reframe
mathematics in terms of set theory (i.e., mostlay ignored
by Bourbaki)
Reflection on the
Course So Far...
 Implicit Topics
• Functions (quantities + arithmetic, names for graphs, formal
definitions...)

• Translation (What do we mean when we say "all continuous

fuctions"?)

• Rigour (appeals to other's intuition, explaining one's own intuition,

explaining your own work, starting with definitions, etc...)

• How to define "what is mathematics" (consider definition of function,

studying permutations of roots instead of roots, complex numbers,
etc.)

• abstraction (geometry-based, arithmetic based, then formal

mathematics...)