Saunders MacLane (University of Chicago)
Thursday, October 17, Abelson 131, 2 p.m.
The current pressures on research in the mathematical sciences are no longer just budgetary, but also have become programmatic. A brief selection of such pressures include the following:
There are proposals to "reinvent the University" along engineering lines, as advocated at a recent conference at UCLA, proposing industrial ideas like total quality management and not tenure for faculty.
There are criticisms of the Vannevar Bush report, Science, the endless frontier, from people who do not understand the origins of Bush's ideas. A recent conference on this topic at Columbia University represented science policy experts and not scientists---the two are not the same.
There have been workshops on graduate work which emphasize training for industry, and wholly forget that a thesis is required for the Ph.D. Degree.
There have been many reforms of the calculus, some tainted with substantial errors, and with irrelevant real world examples.
These and related developments will be examined.
Hosts: David Buchsbaum (Mathematics) and Harry Mairson (Computer Science)
Saunders MacLane is one of the leading figures in twentieth century mathematics. He has done pioneering work in algebra and algebraic topology and, with S. Eilenberg, founded the theory of categories. His work on categories has had an enormous influence not only on mathematics, but also on theoretical computer science.
He was vice-president of the National Academy of Sciences, president of the American Mathematical Society, and served on the National Science Board. In recent years, he has written and lectured extensively on the development of universities and the problems that now confront them.