nLab Samuel Eilenberg

With Saunders Mac Lane, ‘Sammy’ Eilenberg was one of the ‘fathers’ of category theory. In their 1945 paper General Theory of Natural Equivalences they introduced the definition of category. The reason for introducing categories was to introduce functors, and the reason for introducing functors was to introduce natural transformations (more specifically natural equivalences) in order to define what natural means in mathematics.

Selected writings

Introducing the Eilenberg-Steenrod axioms for ordinary cohomology:

Introducing simplicial sets and semi-simplicial sets (see the historical remarks here):

On algebraic topology:

Introducing the Eilenberg-Zilber theorem:

Introducing Eilenberg-MacLane spaces:

On homological algebra:

On homology of loop spaces:

category: people

Last revised on July 12, 2022 at 08:41:52. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.