I lived the greatest part of my childhood and adolescence under the Peronist government, about which the only thing I was told was that it had to be opposed and never ever talked about in the presence of the domestic employees, presumably out of fear of being denounced to the police. As I had swallowed Catholicism without questioning, I did likewise with anti-Peronism. My parents were conservative - not to say reactionary. ...

Like most middle-class Argentinians of my generation, I was educated (so to speak) in the midst of the Catholicism professed by my parents. I spent both my elementary and secondary school years as a day student at a religious school run by Carmelite Spanish nuns, situated in the Belgrano neighbourhood of Buenos Aires where we lived. The religion taught at the school was just a collection of rites and stories from the bible, which in fact was limited to the New Testament.

... both fascinating and hard, so much so that I had to ask my father, a civil engineer with a solid knowledge of the basic sciences and mathematics, for help in writing up the weekly essays required for it. His help, coupled with my willingness to learn, led me to become the best student in a course of fifty or so students. It was not long before Mario took an interest in me ...

Marta, 19 years younger than I, was serious, intelligent, charming, courageous, beautiful, and elegant. She used to study together with three classmates a couple of years older than her. All four audited my philosophy course, and were enrolled in the teacher's college, which under Peronism had decayed less than the university. I started accompanying her to the Retiro railway hub, where we sat under the English Tower, distinguished by a copy of Big Ben and a reminder of the great power that Britain had exerted in our country. At first we took the first trains available, but we soon started missing trains. After a couple of months we confessed our mutual love. From then on we also met in parks, museums, and milk bars.

Although Peter Freyd and Bill Lawvere shared Sammy Eilenberg as an ancestor, they each had different original interests. Whereas Peter had started out with a 1960 Princeton dissertation on a general theory of categories and functors in addition to his contributions to stable homotopy theory, followed by his highly original book on abelian categories influenced by Alexander Grothendieck and Peter Gabriel, Bill did so motivated instead by the work of Clifford Truesdell and Walter Noll on continuum mechanics, a subject which he postponed to deal with until later while coming up in the meantime with a novel concept of algebraic theory for his 1963 Columbia dissertation. In both cases, their wide knowledge of mathematics became an important factor in their ability to grasp important concepts from various sources some of which had been previously unrelated, while doing so with rigour and precision not to speak of elegance.

I wish to express my gratitude: to Professor Peter Freyd, for having introduced me to the subject of categories as well as for his encouragement while I studied at the University of Pennsylvania; to Professor William Lawvere, for his inspiration in the writing of this paper and for his supervision while I was working on it at the E.T.H., Zürich; to Professors Emil Grosswald and Joachim Lambek, for their encouragement, and to Professor Beno Eckmann, for his hospitality at the Mathematisches Institut, E.T.H., Zürich.

The theory of categories was introduced by Eilenberg and Mac Lane in 1945; it arose from the field of topology. It was soon realised that other mathematical theories as well could profit from their invention. This was initially the main reason for the increasing interest in categories. The applications brought soon attention to problems peculiar to the theory of categories, which in a few years grew enough to become another area of mathematics. Even so, the now widespread interest in category theory seems still to lie in the many virtues of its applications, such as its unifying character, elegant and concise language, fruitfulness and emphasis on results involving structure. This led to the idea that category theory might provide a more suitable foundation for mathematics than set theory. To carry out this program it was necessary to have also a theory of the (meta)category of categories. Lawvere has recently provided such a theory; this seems to be the proper framework in which to develop mathematics on a categorical basis.

An important step in the program of categorising mathematics has been accomplished by Lawvere himself upon reformulating set theory in terms of categorical concepts alone, namely, those of mapping, domain, codomain and composition.

In this paper we study a class of categories closely related to the category of sets and mappings.

The author gives a clear account of this subject and provides generalised definitions for adjoints, functor categories and standard constructions (or triples). The author obtains some substantial theorems which examine these concepts in relative category theory.

Marta Bunge's contributions to category theory mark her as one of its foundational figures. Alongside other luminaries in the field, she shaped its trajectory and made significant strides across various domains, from categorical logic (a cornerstone of the McGill group) to topos theory, synthetic differential geometry, and synthetic differential topology. Marta possessed a keen eye for identifying and delving into fundamental ideas, coupled with a profound appreciation for the collaborative nature of category theory. Her collaborative endeavours include the monograph "Singular Coverings of Toposes" (2006) and the book "Synthetic Differential Topology" (2018).

Category theorists are conceptual mathematicians of a special kind. What binds them together is that they approach mathematical problems with a point of view that is radically different from that on which traditional mathematics is based, and which emphasises interactions between mathematical objects over their individual constituents. Their results are often surprising, provide new insights, and are obtained by the invention of sophisticated notions, theories, and techniques. Category Theory is only little more than 50 years old (dating it back to the work of S Eilenberg and S Mac Lane in 1945) - yet, its impact on several branches of mathematics has been considerable, in spite of the reluctance to recognise it as a revolutionary independent field dealing with foundational questions, very different from Set Theory.

Less than a week before she passed away, and already very ill, she made a concerted effort to complete one last editorial review for a journal. As I told her, it would have been perfectly understandable under the circumstances for her to either decline to handle the submission or to conduct a cursory review. Instead, she read the paper carefully and wrote a detailed report. I was astonished then, as I have been on many other occasions, at both her formidable intellect and strength of character.

My mother was born and raised in Buenos Aires, after which she and my dad lived in the U.S. and Europe before settling in Montreal for decades. She was a theoretical mathematician with many outside interests, including music, literature, politics, and more. She was such a creative writer that we begged her to retire and write a novel, but she didn't want to give up on her work. A native Spanish speaker, she spoke English flawlessly and was fluent in French, Italian, and Greek. She was an adventurer, swimming long distances while dodging motorboats, cross-country skiing in the bitter cold north of Montreal, etc. - and she planned elaborate family trips to faraway lands like Egypt and India.

My mom was also very involved throughout her career in the struggle for human rights, advocating for mathematicians incarcerated for their political beliefs, and raising awareness about their conditions. She was an avid reader of many international journals, and uncompromising in her critique of nations that don't uphold human rights.

My mom was the only woman in her department at McGill University for the first 30 years of her faculty position, after which a second one was hired. She experienced sexism but didn't consider herself a feminist; she just pursued her passion for mathematics. She didn't talk about her work much (we wouldn't have understood it), so it's been gratifying to hear from her colleagues and former students that she was a brilliant mathematician, an inspiring and generous teacher, and a warm colleague.

Farewell to a bright, funny, cultured, elegant, passionate, and fearless mom.

The library of Professor Dr Marta Bunge donated to the Institute of Mathematics and Sytatistics, University of Sao Paulo (IME) is composed of more than 800 books identified by the Bunge label and the ex-libris of a dragonfly. In overview, the books cover the area of Category Theory, Professor Bunge's specialty, whose knowledge can also be applied to other sciences (physics, biology, philosophy, etc.). ...

The story of this donation begins with a family friend, the Brazilian mathematician Valéria de Paiva, who works at the Topos Institute in Berkeley, California. A pioneer in Category Theory research in Brazil, she was a supporter of Dr Marta Bunge and has already spearheaded and co-edited a special issue of the journal Theory and Applications of Categories in her honour. So, after the death of Professor Marta Bunge, her daughter and son, Silvia and Eric Bunge, were looking for a university to donate her library, when they contacted Dr de Paiva to ask for help. She, meanwhile, informed Professor Hugo Mariano, from IME's Mathematics Department, about this opportunity. ...
The books were sent to the University of Sao Paulo's Institute of Mathematics and Statistics in São Paulo by ship. ...

The whole donation process took around eight months, and the books arrived in December 2023, when they were cataloged and made available for borrowing at the IME Library. ... the donation consisted of 856 books ... The books can be identified by the "BUNGE" label on the spine, as well as the ex-libris stamp of a dragonfly on the first page. Many copies also have the signature of Professor Marta Bunge on the first page.

The symbol of the ex-libris was not chosen by chance. Silvia Bunge once read that the dragonfly symbolises wisdom and transformation: "perfect for a body of knowledge transferred from our mother's personal library to a university." Her brother, Eric, recalled that during a walk, Professor Marta was once followed all the way home by a dragonfly.