Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

@Nikolaj-K
Last active January 11, 2024 23:16
Show Gist options
  • Star 16 You must be signed in to star a gist
  • Fork 1 You must be signed in to fork a gist
  • Save Nikolaj-K/282515e58c1c14de2e25222065f77a0a to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Save Nikolaj-K/282515e58c1c14de2e25222065f77a0a to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Recomended reading for the undergrad category theorist

In this video we come across about 50 online resources for category theory:

https://youtu.be/hEW42ARKNoE

I quickly comment on about 20 major ones. I link to the university sites, arXiv sites or Amazon page - most of the mentioned books are online available.

Here's another category theory list on github

https://github.com/prathyvsh/category-theory-resources

Criteria for my book/text selection here are:

  • it's a book I like
  • it's a classic
  • it's a book that may be taylored for particluar fields/people
  • it's a book on a topic that I mentioned on my youtube channel or that's related to its content

...

(Leinster) Basic Category Theory 178

https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.09375

(Awodey) Category Theory 247

http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/course/80-413-713/notes/?C=M;O=A

(Goldblatt) Topoi: The Categorial Analysis of Logic 551

https://www.amazon.com/Topoi-Categorial-Analysis-Logic-Mathematics/dp/0486450260/

(Simmons) An introduction to Category Theory 423

http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~hsimmons/zCATS.pdf -- link seems to be defunkt right now

...

(MacLane) Categories for the Working Mathematician 314

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0387984038/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

(Pareigis) Category Theory 90

http://www.mathematik.uni-muenchen.de/~pareigis/Vorlesungen/04SS/Cats1.pdf

(Johnstone, Mehrle) Category Theory 76

http://pi.math.cornell.edu/~dmehrle/notes/partiii/cattheory_partiii_notes.pdf

(Barr, Wells) Category Theory Lecture Notes 133

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.98.9012&rep=rep1&type=pdf

...

(Smith) Category Theory - A Gentle Introduction 290

https://www.logicmatters.net/categories/

(Beaz) Category Theory Course 59

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/qg-winter2016/CategoryTheoryNotes.pdf

Conceptual Mathematics - A first Introduction To Categories (Lawvere, Schanuel) 375

https://www.amazon.com/Conceptual-Mathematics-First-Introduction-Categories/dp/052171916X

(Morehouse) Basic Category Theory 81

http://emorehouse.web.wesleyan.edu/research/notes/basic_category_theory.pdf

...

(Aluffi) Algebra: Chapter 0 713

https://www.amazon.com/Algebra-Chapter-Graduate-Studies-Mathematics/dp/0821847813

(Bergman) An Invitation to General Algebraand Universal Constructions 554

https://math.berkeley.edu/~gbergman/245/3.3.pdf

(Taylor) Practical Foundations of Mathematics 580

https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Foundations-Mathematics-Cambridge-Advanced/dp/0521631076

(MacLane) Sheaves in Geometry and Logic: A First Introduction to Topos Theory

https://www.amazon.com/Sheaves-Geometry-Logic-Introduction-Universitext/dp/0387977104

(Borceux) Some glances at topos theory 63

https://tcsc.lakecomoschool.org/files/2018/06/Como2018.pdf

(Riehl) Category Theory in context 233

http://www.math.jhu.edu/~eriehl/context.pdf

(Jacobs) Categorical Logic And Type Theory 760

https://www.amazon.com/Categorical-Theory-Studies-Foundations-Mathematics/dp/0444508538

(Rodin) Axiomatic Method and Category Theory 338

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1210.1478v1.pdf

(Streicher) Introduction to Category Theory and Categorical Logic

https://www2.mathematik.tu-darmstadt.de/~streicher/CTCL.pdf

(Paolo Perrone) Notes on Category Theory with examples from basic mathematics

https://arxiv.org/abs/1912.10642

...

(Spivak) Category Theory for Scientists 197

http://math.mit.edu/~dspivak/teaching/sp13/CT4S--static.pdf

(Fong, Spivak) Seven Sketches in Compositionality: An Invitation to Applied Category Theory 353

https://math.mit.edu/~dspivak/teaching/sp18/7Sketches.pdf

(Fong, Spivak) An Invitation to Applied Category Theory 331

https://www.amazon.com/Invitation-Applied-Category-Theory-Compositionality/dp/1108711820

(Coecke, Paquette) Categories for the practising physicist 105

https://arxiv.org/pdf/0905.3010.pdf

(Milewski) Category Theory for Programmers 498

https://github.com/hmemcpy/milewski-ctfp-pdf/

(Barr, Wells) Category Theory for Computing Science 531

http://www.math.mcgill.ca/triples/Barr-Wells-ctcs.pdf

(Cockett) Category Theory for Computer Science 107

http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~robin/class/617/notes.pdf

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment