Tom Leinster

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Leinster in 2003 Tom Leinster November 2003 (cropped).jpg
Leinster in 2003

Thomas "Tom" Stephen Hampden Leinster (born 1971) is a British mathematician, known for his work on category theory.

Contents

Education and career

Leinster graduated in 2000 with a PhD from the University of Cambridge. His PhD 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 generalisation of the Euler characteristic in category theory, the magnitude. He also considered such generalisations 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 axiomatisation 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

References

  1. ↑ Tom Leinster at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  2. ↑ Tom Leinster (2014). Basic Category Theory. Cambridge Studies in Advanced Mathematics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. arXiv: 1612.09375 . doi:10.1017/cbo9781107360068. ISBN   978-1-107-04424-1.
  3. ↑ 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.
  4. ↑ 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.
  5. ↑ "MAA to Honor Authors of Year's Best Writing in Mathematics | Mathematical Association of America".
  6. ↑ 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 . PMID   16591243.
  7. ↑ "Posts by Tom Leinster, The n-Category Café".
  8. ↑ Tom Leinster (26 April 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
  9. ↑ Mathematicians: refuse to work for the NSA!, Boing Boing , 27 April 2014
  10. ↑ Mathematicians Push Back Against The NSA, Slashdot, 27 April 2014
  11. ↑ Un mathématicien appelle ses collègues à ne plus travailler pour la NSA », Mediapart , 28 avril 2014 lire le texte ici
  12. ↑ 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)". Der Spiegel (in German).
  13. ↑ Patrick Beuth (28 April 2014). "Mathematiker ruft zum Geheimdienst-Boykott auf (Mathematician calls on secret service boycott)". Die Zeit (in German).
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