Michael Makkai (; 24 June 1939 in

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

) is a

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

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 ...

of Hungarian origin, specializing in

mathematical logic Mathematical logic is the study of Logic#Formal logic, formal logic within mathematics. Major subareas include model theory, proof theory, set theory, and recursion theory (also known as computability theory). Research in mathematical logic com ...

. He works in

model theory In mathematical logic, model theory is the study of the relationship between theory (mathematical logic), formal theories (a collection of Sentence (mathematical logic), sentences in a formal language expressing statements about a Structure (mat ...

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 ...

algebraic logic In mathematical logic, algebraic logic is the reasoning obtained by manipulating equations with Free variables and bound variables, free variables. What is now usually called classical algebraic logic focuses on the identification and algebraic de ...

type theory In mathematics and theoretical computer science, a type theory is the formal presentation of a specific type system. Type theory is the academic study of type systems. Some type theories serve as alternatives to set theory as a foundation of ...

and the theory of

topoi In mathematics, a topos (, ; plural topoi or , or toposes) is a category that behaves like the category of sheaves of sets on a topological space (or more generally, on a site). Topoi behave much like the category of sets and possess a notion ...

Career

Academic biography

Makkai was awarded his PhD from the

Eötvös Loránd University Eötvös Loránd University (, ELTE, also known as ''University of Budapest'') is a Hungarian public research university based in Budapest. Founded in 1635, ELTE is one of the largest and most prestigious public higher education institutions in ...

, Budapest, in 1966, having been supervised by

Rózsa Péter Rózsa Péter, until January 1934 Rózsa Politzer, (17 February 1905 – 16 February 1977) was a Hungarian mathematician and logician. She is best known as the "founding mother of recursion theory". Early life and education Péter was bor ...

and

Andrzej Mostowski Andrzej Mostowski (1 November 1913 – 22 August 1975) was a Polish mathematician. He worked primarily in logic and foundations of mathematics and is perhaps best remembered for the Mostowski collapse lemma. He was a member of the Polish Academy ...

. He then worked at the Mathematical Institute of the

Hungarian Academy of Sciences The Hungarian Academy of Sciences ( , MTA) is Hungary’s foremost and most prestigious learned society. Its headquarters are located along the banks of the Danube in Budapest, between Széchenyi rakpart and Akadémia utca. The Academy's primar ...

. Between 1974 and 2010, he was professor of mathematics at

McGill University McGill University (French: Université McGill) is an English-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill University, Vol. I. For the Advancement of Learning, ...

, retiring in 2010. He is also an external member of the

(1995).

Work

With Leo Harrington and

Saharon Shelah Saharon Shelah (; , ; born July 3, 1945) is an Israeli mathematician. He is a professor of mathematics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Rutgers University in New Jersey. Biography Shelah was born in Jerusalem on July 3, 1945. He is th ...

he proved the

Vaught conjecture The Vaught conjecture is a conjecture in the mathematical field of model theory originally proposed by Robert Lawson Vaught in 1961. It states that the number of countable models of a first-order complete theory in a countable language is finit ...

for ω-stable theories. With Robert Paré he further developed the theory of Accessible Categories. Makkai has an

Erdős number The Erdős number () describes the "collaborative distance" between mathematician Paul Erdős and another person, as measured by authorship of mathematical papers. The same principle has been applied in other fields where a particular individual ...

of 1, having published "Some Remarks on Set Theory, X" with

Paul Erdős Paul Erdős ( ; 26March 191320September 1996) was a Hungarian mathematician. He was one of the most prolific mathematicians and producers of mathematical conjectures of the 20th century. pursued and proposed problems in discrete mathematics, g ...

in 1966.

Selected publications

* M. Makkai, G. E. Reyes: ''First Order Categorical Logic, Lecture Notes in Mathematics'', 611, Springer, 1977, viii+301 pp. * L. Harrington, M. Makkai, S. Shelah: A proof of Vaught's conjecture for ω-stable theories, ''

Israel Journal of Mathematics '' Israel Journal of Mathematics'' is a peer-reviewed mathematics journal published by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem ( Magnes Press). History Founded in 1963, as a continuation of the ''Bulletin of the Research Council of Israel'' (Section ...

'', 49(1984), 259–280. * Michael Makkai, Robert Paré: ''Accessible categories: the foundations of categorical model theory''. Contemporary Mathematics, 104. American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 1989. viii+176 pp. , * M. Makkai: ''Duality and Definability in First Order Logic'', Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society, 503, 1993, ISSN 0065-9266.

References

External links

* Makkai'
homepage
at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences * Makkai'
homepage
at McGill University {{DEFAULTSORT:Makkai, Michael 1939 births Living people Canadian mathematicians Hungarian emigrants to Canada 20th-century Hungarian mathematicians 21st-century Hungarian mathematicians Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences