Tom Leinster
Thomas "Tom" Stephen Hampden Leinster (born 1971) is a British mathematician, known for his work on category theory.
Education and career
Leinster graduated in 2000 with a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. His Ph.D. thesis Operads in Higher-Dimensional Category Theory was supervised by Martin Hyland.[1] After teaching at the University of Glasgow, Leinster became, and is now, a professor at the University of Edinburgh. He published textbooks on category theory[2] and higher categories and operads.[3] In the 2010s, he was mainly concerned with a generalization of the Euler characteristic in category theory, the magnitude. He also considered such generalizations in metric spaces with application in biology (measurement of biodiversity).
Award and honour
Leinster groups (i.e., finite groups whose order is equal to the sum of the orders of their normal subgroups) are named in his honour.[4] He received the 2019 Chauvenet Prize for Rethinking Set Theory[5] (based upon an axiomatization published in 1964 by F. William Lawvere).[6] He is a frequent author and moderator for the academic group blog n-Category Café, where topics from mathematics, science and philosophy are discussed, often from the perspective of category theory.[7] International media attention resulted from a 2014 article by Leinster in the New Scientist.[8] Leinster's article called, on the basis of ethics, for mathematicians to refuse to work for intelligence agencies.[9][10][11] In German-speaking countries, this was reported by, among others, Der Spiegel[12] and Zeit Online.[13]
Selected publications
- Tom Leinster (2001). "A Survey of Definitions of n-Category". arXiv:math/0107188.
- Tom Leinster (2003). "Higher Operads, Higher Categories". arXiv:math/0305049.
- Tom Leinster (2016). "Basic Category Theory". arXiv:1612.09375 [math.CT].
- Tom Leinster (May 2014). "Rethinking Set Theory". The American Mathematical Monthly. 121 (5): 403–415. arXiv:1212.6543. doi:10.4169/amer.math.monthly.121.05.403.
- Leinster, Tom; Meckes, Mark W. (2017). "The magnitude of a metric space: from category theory to geometric measure theory by Tom Leinster and Mark W. Meckes". In Nicola Gigli (ed.). Measure Theory in Non-Smooth Spaces. De Gruyter. arXiv:1606.00095. doi:10.1515/9783110550832-005. ISBN 978-3-11-055083-2.
References
- ^ Tom Leinster at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ^ Tom Leinster (2014). Basic Category Theory. Cambridge Studies in Advanced Mathematics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/cbo9781107360068. ISBN 978-1-107-04424-1.
- ^ Tom Leinster (2004). Higher Operads, Higher Categories. London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. arXiv:math/0305049. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511525896. ISBN 978-0-521-53215-0.
- ^ Baishya, Sekhar Jyoti (January 2014). "Revisiting the Leinster groups". Comptes Rendus Mathematique. 352 (1): 1–6. Bibcode:2014CRMat.352....1B. doi:10.1016/j.crma.2013.11.009. ISSN 1631-073X.
- ^ "MAA to Honor Authors of Year's Best Writing in Mathematics | Mathematical Association of America".
- ^ Lawvere, F. William (1964). "An elementary theory of the category of sets". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 52 (6): 1506–1511. Bibcode:1964PNAS...52.1506L. doi:10.1073/pnas.52.6.1506. PMC 300477.
- ^ "Posts by Tom Leinster, The n-Category Café".
- ^ Tom Leinster (April 26, 2014). "Maths spying: the quandary of working for the spooks". New Scientist. 222 (2966): 26–27. Bibcode:2014NewSc.222...26L. doi:10.1016/S0262-4079(14)60827-7. ISSN 0262-4079. reprint in slate.com
- ^ Mathematicians: refuse to work for the NSA!, Boing Boing, 27 April 2014
- ^ Mathematicians Push Back Against The NSA, Slashdot, 27 April 2014
- ^ Un mathématicien appelle ses collègues à ne plus travailler pour la NSA », Mediapart, 28 avril 2014 lire le texte ici
- ^ Holger Dambeck (28 April 2014). "NSA: Mathematiker ruft Kollegen auf nicht für Geheimdienst zu arbeiten (NSA: Mathematician calls on colleagues not to work for secret service)". Spiegel Online (in German).
- ^ Patrick Beuth (April 28, 2014). "Mathematiker ruft zum Geheimdienst-Boykott auf (Mathematician calls on secret service boycott)". Die Zeit (in German).
External links
- Homepage, University of Edinburgh (with many links to publications, talks, & notes)
- Tom Leinster in the database zbMATH
