Samuel Eilenberg

Calvin C. Elgot

Cal Elgot was a very serious and thoughtful researcher, who with great determi nation attempted to find basic explanations for certain mathematical phenomena as the selection of papers in this volume well illustrate. His approach was, for the most part, rather finitist and constructivist, and he was inevitably drawn to studies of the process of computation. It seems to me that his early work on decision problems relating automata and logic, starting with his thesis under Roger Lyndon and continuing with joint work with Biichi, Wright, Copi, Rutledge, Mezei, and then later with Rabin, set the stage for his attack on the theory of computation through the abstract treatment of the notion of a machine. This is also apparent in his joint work with A. Robinson reproduced here and in his joint papers with John Shepherdson. Of course in the light of subsequent work on decision problems by Biichi, Rabin, Shelah, and many, many others, the subject has been placed on a completely different plane from what it was when Elgot left the area. But I feel that his papers, results-and style-were very definitely influential at the time and may well have altered the course of the investigation of these problems. As Sammy Eilenberg explains, the next big influence on Elgot's thinking was category theory, which gave him a way of expressing his ideas in a sharply algebraic manner. The joint book with Eilenberg is one illustration of this influence.

Calvin C. Elgot Selected Papers

Henry Cartan

When this book was written, methods of algebraic topology had caused revolutions in the world of pure algebra. To clarify the advances that had been made, Cartan and Eilenberg tried to unify the fields and to construct the framework of a fully fledged theory. The invasion of algebra had occurred on three fronts through the construction of cohomology theories for groups, Lie algebras, and associative algebras. This book presents a single homology (and also cohomology) theory that embodies all three; a large number of results is thus established in a general framework. Subsequently, each of the three theories is singled out by a suitable specialization, and its specific properties are studied. The starting point is the notion of a module over a ring. The primary operations are the tensor product of two modules and the groups of all homomorphisms of one module into another. From these, "higher order" derived of operations are obtained, which enjoy all the properties usually attributed to homology theories. This leads in a natural way to the study of "functors" and of their "derived functors." This mathematical masterpiece will appeal to all mathematicians working in algebraic topology.

Samuel Eilenberg

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