Peter John Freyd (; born February 5, 1936) is an American

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, mathematical structure, structure, space, Mathematica ...

, a professor at the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

, known for work in

category theory Category theory is a general theory of mathematical structures and their relations. It was introduced by Samuel Eilenberg and Saunders Mac Lane in the middle of the 20th century in their foundational work on algebraic topology. Category theory ...

and for founding the

False Memory Syndrome Foundation The False Memory Syndrome Foundation (FMSF) was a nonprofit organization founded in 1992 and dissolved in late 2019. The FMSF was created by Pamela and Peter Freyd, after their adult daughter Jennifer Freyd accused her father of child sexual abu ...

Mathematics

Freyd obtained his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

in 1960; his dissertation, on ''Functor Theory'', was written under the supervision of

Norman Steenrod Norman Earl Steenrod (April 22, 1910October 14, 1971) was an American mathematician most widely known for his contributions to the field of algebraic topology. Life He was born in Dayton, Ohio, and educated at Miami University and University of ...

and

David Buchsbaum David Alvin Buchsbaum (November 6, 1929 – January 8, 2021) was a mathematician at Brandeis University who worked on commutative algebra, homological algebra, and representation theory. He proved the Auslander–Buchsbaum formula and the Ausland ...

. Freyd is best known for his

adjoint functor In mathematics, specifically category theory, adjunction is a relationship that two functors may exhibit, intuitively corresponding to a weak form of equivalence between two related categories. Two functors that stand in this relationship are k ...

theorem. He was the author of the foundational book ''Abelian Categories: An Introduction to the Theory of Functors'' (1964). This work culminates in a proof of the

Freyd–Mitchell embedding theorem Mitchell's embedding theorem, also known as the Freyd–Mitchell theorem or the full embedding theorem, is a result about abelian category, abelian categories; it essentially states that these categories, while rather abstractly defined, are in fac ...

. In addition, Freyd's name is associated with the HOMFLYPT polynomial of knot theory, and he and Andre Scedrov originated the concept of (mathematical)

allegories As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory throughou ...

. In 2012, he became a fellow of the

American Mathematical Society The American Mathematical Society (AMS) is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, and serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, ...

False Memory Syndrome Foundation

Freyd and his wife Pamela founded the

in 1992, after Freyd was accused of childhood sexual abuse by his daughter

Jennifer Jennifer or Jenifer may refer to: People *Jennifer (given name) * Jenifer (singer), French pop singer *Jennifer Warnes, American singer who formerly used the stage name Jennifer * Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer * Daniel Jenifer Film and televisi ...

.Diana E. H. Russell. ''The Secret Trauma: Incest in the Lives of Girls and Women''.

Basic Books Basic Books is a book publisher founded in 1950 and located in New York City, now an imprint of Hachette Book Group. It publishes books in the fields of psychology, philosophy, economics, science, politics, sociology, current affairs, and his ...

, 1987. xx–xxi.Freyd, J. (1996) ''Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Child Abuse.'' Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. The history of the confrontations between the Freyds and their daughter Jennifer is recounted in the Afterword, pages 197–199. Peter Freyd denied the accusations. Three years after its founding, it had more than 7,500 members. As of December 2019, the False Memory Syndrome Foundation was dissolved.

Publications

* Reprinted with a forward as * Peter J. Freyd and Andre Scedrov: ''Categories, Allegories''. North-Holland (1999). . * *

References

External links

* * Printable versions o
Abelian categories, an introduction to the theory of functors
Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Category theorists University of Pennsylvania faculty Mathematicians at the University of Pennsylvania Princeton University alumni Fellows of the American Mathematical Society 1936 births People from Evanston, Illinois Mathematicians from Illinois {{US-mathematician-stub