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Peter J. Freyd

Peter John Freyd is an American mathematician, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, known for work in category theory and for founding the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.

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Peter J. Freyd
Freyd in 2008
BornFebruary 5, 1936 (1936-02-05) (age 90)
Alma materBrown University (BA)
Princeton University (PhD)
Known forAllegory
Freyd cover
Freyd's adjoint functor theorem
Freyd–Mitchell theorem
HOMFLY polynomial
Scientific career
FieldsCategory theory
InstitutionsUniversity of Pennsylvania
Norman Steenrod
David Buchsbaum
Doctoral students
Marta Bunge
Murray Adelman
Orville Kean
Preston Kohn
Douglas Howe
David E. Joyce
David N. Yetter
Stacey Finkelstein

Peter John Freyd (/frd/; born February 5, 1936) is an American mathematician, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, known for work in category theory and for founding the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.

Mathematics

Freyd obtained his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1960; his dissertation, on Functor Theory,2 was written under the supervision of Norman Steenrod and David Buchsbaum.

Freyd is best known for his adjoint functor theorem. He was the author of the foundational book Abelian Categories: An Introduction to the Theory of Functors (1964). This work culminates in a proof of the Freyd–Mitchell embedding theorem.

In addition, Freyd's name is associated with the HOMFLYPT polynomial of knot theory, and he and Andre Scedrov originated the concept of (mathematical) allegories.

In 2012, he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.3

Publications

References

References

  1. American Men and Women of Science, Thomson Gale, 2005
  2. Addison, J.W.; Henkin, Leon; Tarsk, Alfred (2014). The Theory of Models: Proceedings of the 1963 International Symposium at Berkeley. Elsevier. ISBN 9781483275345.
  3. List of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society, retrieved 2012-12-29.
  4. Linton, F. E. J. (1965). "Review of Abelian categories: an introduction to the theory of functors by Peter Freyd" (PDF). Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 71 (4): 577–580. doi:10.1090/s0002-9904-1965-11342-8.
External links