FW Lawvere

0:00 I do realize that's a long way from Bloomington. ...for two nights with my car and my girlfriend. I do realize that Bloomington is a heck of a long way from here. And it's 200 miles south of Chicago. Yeah. But the thing is, the first line will be Samson University. But Amstead for Treeville University, Indiana University, that's where I'm... I'm so sorry. ...acquainted with folks. And with category theory, but not because, you see, there is a story about some item there. Thank you very much for your time. If I said Chicago, I meant to say Columbia about your PhD. You certainly didn't know that. Did you actually look at the Wikipedia article? No, but the problem is I'd lost it. I couldn't find it. I went back last night to look through the Wikipedia article. I haven't got a computer. Well, there's no computer connection in that place anyway, so I'm going to switch off. And the problem is, no, I actually printed it out before leaving to go down to Madrid,

2:30 but I don't know where. Somehow I've misplaced it because I looked high and low for it, couldn't find it. So I just had to reconstruct everything I remember in my head. Well, if I had been able to access... Oh, thank you. If I had been able to access... And then it's also said that my first teaching was a fundamental reason why that has to be denied, when I first teach in John Reed College. That was Reed, that I knew, yeah. And it was because of having to teach by an undergraduate counselor, founded from the foundation of the study of you, that I devised the elementary theory of the category of sets, as Lesley told us. No, I certainly knew that your first teaching was in Reed, and that is very important. But the thing says Chicago, you see, millions of people. I certainly would have known that as well, and I made the video about it, but I get very excited about it. I'm always thinking that it was beat in Kenya and in Tibet, and this is all they know about category theory. I'm glad that Colin was able to find something. I am sorry if I'm having to do with me in particular. To your attention, I did have the ask for a cube, which is now in relatively good shape. Sure, the ask is completely unrelated to that. You've probably told me before.

5:00 What was Chamberlain's religion? Joseph and Neville's father and son. Father and son, absolutely. Hawking and Neville, and Neville were both the sons of the elder and younger son of Chamberlain. Absolutely, yeah. Absolutely, yeah. But Hawking and Neville were brothers. So Neville was the prime minister? Neville was the prime minister. He was the younger son. Hawking was the foreign secretary. No, I'm sorry, when you said the two Chamberlains, I thought you were saying the Joseph Chamberlain, the British imperialist, the man who split the Liberal Party, and who was, oh, well, no, he was a really major British political man who made the weather for 20 years, which was a good discussion. He never became Prime Minister, but he, and he was technically the arbiter of, and then he split the, um, tariff reform. No, he was actually a colonialist. No, because Lansdowne was the prime. He was responsible, he was the guy who was responsible for Jameson Raid.

25:00 I hope my body language was sufficient to make it clear to him. I didn't walk him from the house around that afternoon. I think he got the body language there.

27:30 Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think he was... I don't know what the hell he thinks he's doing because... Sorry, I know you wanted to stick with the story about Adam. I have no idea which story...

30:00 Yes, switch the vote. But I have heard it said that the design of Washington, that means the city, that the French military engineer, the guy I've forgotten his name, the White House or the rest of that, but I understood that Jefferson also had considerable influence on the layout of the city plan in Washington, so I was wondering therefore if there was evidence that he was also Mason. I don't know. He spent a long time in the court of Russia, Bazaar, in France, in Germany, and in England.

32:30 He was actually the ambassador. Yeah, he was the ambassador to various states. He was the ambassador to England. He was basically the architect.

35:00 I can think it was rather more gentlemanly and eloquent. So I don't understand what you mean though. I'm sorry, I thought you were having an allotment of two hours.

42:30 I have a tight schedule in Boston for two days. I give Colin and John here an hour. And then if I give you and Cartier 45 minutes. I have 90 minutes, so I should say. Chef, last night you had a cafe on the... what do you think it was? Yeah, we were on off green there. I checked the programme of Bosley and I saw that John has put in three additional contributory talks that I didn't know anything about and he hasn't told me, and a couple of them, one is from this Bettini-Macropper-Lord lady, I don't know if you know about her or not. I'm afraid she's one of the Myers quantum gravity people. She works on something called the set theory, which is a really deeply trivial idea, and I'm not quite sure why she's suddenly giving a contrived talk.

45:00 Just tell me one thing. Gonzalo has got the full schedule, about an hour and a half, same time as you. Oh, yes, absolutely. Well, he's on the one that I was looking at last night, and I assure you, I spoke to John, and we'll go over here. Maybe we can discuss this later. Yeah, yeah, yeah, if you want to concentrate on it. No, I can absolutely assure you that Gonzalo is on the program. In fact, not only is he on it, but I spoke to John because he had originally given him only 45 minutes, and I rang John up and said, no, I'm sorry, Gonzalo's got to have the same allotment as the other invited speakers. It's okay, it's not that bad there. No. Oh, my God. Yes, well, marketing, comrade. Yeah, we cut up here. Astrology. I have to think about my... Yes, of course. I had a terrible night, so... Oh, I'm sorry, what? No, I mean, it was nice to be with Bob. Did you not need a bit of sleep? I hate to say it, but in that case, what? I mean, it was an easy day. I didn't try this, because I was perfectly... I was perfectly alert. I slept in my own... Well, it sounds like it's quite a waste of time to sleep with him. Even if it's just a day.

47:30 Yeah, but just to... I did in fact assume about two weeks ago that John, he's certainly on the programme, but he had at that point only been given 45 minutes and I rang John and insisted that he must be given the full allocation, the same as the other three invited speakers. No, we're going to still squeeze it all in Saturday and Sunday, but we're going to have to start damned early. I don't think I've ever been on one. Oh yes, they've been reducing the seat space for everybody, squeezing in the right side. This is of course why there are so many of these people getting embolisms, primary embolisms. That's right. It's absolutely atrocious. The cheapo-cheapo airlines, the so-called cheapo airlines, which of course are not very cheap, they're all these hidden extras, $10 just for using your credit card to make a copy. They're the worst. I mean, they really do squeeze people in like they need. But anyway, Gonzalo has gone. I think, well, he's actually invited me, he's probably just speaking a bit. I can't be invited, but if anything has to go in that program, I think it will be these additional and contributed talks that are going on suddenly. I think I know what's happened there. He's got this student of Kyler in Feeney who's a very good-hearted person, but she's not very good at saying no to anybody. I can just imagine that I don't know if the other two speakers are speaking. I don't know about that one.

50:00 I think their titles, I think they're nice. It's probably just not self-able to say no. But it hasn't come into any of the time for the main speaker. I liked your friend Mark. Unfortunately, he didn't get to say much. We were too busy talking about our own stuff. Also, he was feeling loudly because, as you can tell, he had a very heavy head cold. And also he had to bike in all the way from the suburbs, which is why he had to leave. Yeah, because there wasn't any public transport yesterday. So he had to come out on his bike all the way from about 20 miles outside Paris. The strike has actually ended this morning, as you probably saw on the TV. They have actually voted to go back to work. So, yeah, they expect also to do that normally by some. That's it. That's the Rothschild Foundation. They gave the money for the Curie Institute of Biology. And just as you point out, as Rockefeller gave the money for the 50th Anniversary. There was one time many years ago when there was actually a plaque here saying... You didn't mention the name Rockefeller, you mentioned the General Education Fund, which I happen to know is the Rockefeller Fund. I think then in a later visit it was taken away. There's a thing inside the entrance on the right which tells you the history of the building and I think that mentions that it was built with the Rockefeller Fund. I can't quite remember, I think it does. Maybe we can check it now. It's not actually a plaque, it's just one of those laminated... Yeah, there was a plaque. I'm for general education too, but hmm, they must have went to Poincaré's philosophy. Oh, I think that's very likely.

52:30 Let's see. Yeah, we'll get it later. What's up? I'd like to take a little beer. All right. I'm glad you could get here. I just took the liberty of telling you all a little bit about it.