Saunders Mac Lane was born in 1909 in the United States. He graduated from Yale University in 1930 and received a doctorate degree in 1933 from the University of Göttingen, Germany. He wrote his disertation on mathematical logic.
From 1934 to1938, Mac Lane held short term appointments at Yale University, Harvard University, Cornell University, and the University of Chicago. He then held a tenure track appointment at Harvard from 1938 to 1947. In 1947, he returned to the University of Chicago and served as the department chair.
During his career Mac Lane was a co-creator of category theory, an architect of homological algebra and an advocate of categorical foundations for mathematics. Mac Lane also served as the vice president of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and president of the American Mathematical Society.
Mac Lane delivered two Beatty lectures in December 1981 titled "How Mathematicians Get New Ideas" and "Distortion of Science by Politics".
Listen to Saunders Mac Lane's first Beatty Lecture:
Audio: Ï㽶ÊÓƵ Archives
Photo credit: University of Chicago Archives
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