Portal:Category theory/Selected biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Saunders Mac Lane (4 August 1909, Taftville, Connecticut – 14 April 2005, San Francisco) was an American mathematician who cofounded category theory with Samuel Eilenberg. Their original motivation was homology theory and led to the formalization of what is now called homological algebra. His most recognized work in category theory is the textbook Categories for the Working Mathematician (1971).
Samuel Eilenberg (born in Warsaw, September 30, 1913 and died in New York City, January 30, 1998) was a Polish and American mathematician. He spent much of his career in USA as a professor at Columbia University. His main interest was algebraic topology and foundational grounds to homology theory. He cofounded category theory with Saunders Mac Lane and wrote in 1965, Homological Algebra with Henri Cartan. Later, he worked in automata theory and pure category theory.
Alexander Grothendieck (born March 28, 1928 in Berlin, Germany) is considered to be one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century. He made major contributions to algebraic geometry, homological algebra, and functional analysis. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1966, and was co-awarded the Crafoord Prize with Pierre Deligne in 1988. He declined the latter prize on ethical grounds in an open letter to the media. His work in algebraic geometry led to considerable developments in category theory, such as the concept of Abelian category and derived category.
