Categories for the Working Mathematician

Saunders MacLane, born in Connecticut in 1909, studied mathematics at Yale, Chicago and Göttingen and has taught mathematics at Harvard, Cornell and the University of Chicago. He is now the Max Mason Distinguished Service Professor of Mathematics at the University of Chicago. With Samuel Eilenberg he discovered the theory of categories and some of the basic ideas of homological algebra. His book Homology, covering the latter subject, was published by Springer-Verlag in 1963. This book summarizes the ideas and methods of category theory, which can now be effectively used by mathematicians working in a variety of other fields of mathematical research. The book is based on his lectures at Chicago, Canberra, Bowdoin and Tulane.