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Tom Leinster

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Leinster in 2003

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

Education and career

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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

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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

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  • 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

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  1. ^ Tom Leinster at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  2. ^ 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.
  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.
  7. ^ "Posts by Tom Leinster, The n-Category Café".
  8. ^ 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
  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)". Spiegel Online (in German).
  13. ^ Patrick Beuth (April 28, 2014). "Mathematiker ruft zum Geheimdienst-Boykott auf (Mathematician calls on secret service boycott)". Die Zeit (in German).
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