We are pleased to announce the following conference:
at Centre de Recherche Mathématique (CRM) in Montreal
[More precise details will be posted here as plans become more definite, including precise location of talks, social events, hotel recommendations, and so on. We expect to have a welcoming event on the evening of June 18th, and talks all day on the 19th and 20th, ending mid or late afternoon. There will be some (limited) funding for graduate students wishing to attend.]
If you are interested in attending, or even think you might be interested, please let either Phil Scott or Robert Seely know as soon as possible, so our plans can progress smoothly. Thanks.
Since the mid 1970s there has been a remarkably successful marriage of ideas and techniques between category theory on the one hand and model theory and logic on the other. This was first distilled in the 1977 monograph First Order Categorical Logic by M Makkai and G Reyes, which successfully combined traditional model theory with Grothendieck toposes. In the succeeding years, Makkai has built up an impressive body of work in several related fields: categorical model theory, first order logic with dependent sorts, higher dimensional category theory, and most importantly, a coherent and far reaching view of categorical logic in mathematical foundations.
Such a meeting is timely for several reasons: not only the occasion of Makkai's 70th birthday year, but also because recently there has been a widening consensus that traditional model theory might usefully embrace the categorical methods he pioneered. Traditional model theory is set-based; in contrast, there has been an increasing use of category-theoretic (specifically including sheaf-theoretic) contexts and techniques in recent model-theoretic work in such areas as algebraic geometry, differential algebra, Mordell-Lang theory, etc.
The focus of the meeting will be traditional model theory, categorical model theory and logics, and higher-dimensional category theory (the main themes in Makkai's research career). We hope to have a number of Michael's former and current collegues and students as speakers at the meeting, including the following:
Invited speakers:
Mike Barr
Victor Harnik
Bradd Hart
Andre Joyal
Hal Kierstead
Julia Knight
François Lamarche
Joachim Lambek
Robert Paré
Anand Pillay
Gonzalo Reyes
Charles Steinhorn
Marek Zawadowski
For further information, please email either Phil Scott (phil@site.uottawa.ca) or Robert Seely (rags@math.mcgill.ca) (local organizers).
Organizing Committee:
B. Hart (McMaster)
T. Kucera (Manitoba)
P.J. Scott (Ottawa)
R.A.G. Seely (McGill)