Subject: categories: Book announcement: Frobenius algebras & 2D TQFTs

From: Joachim Kock <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2004 16:50:07 -0500

Dear categorists,

this is to announce the availability of my book

   Joachim Kock
   Frobenius algebras and 2D topological quantum field theories
   LMSST 59, Cambridge (see http://books.cambridge.org/0521832675.htm).

It's a rather long account of the 'folk theorem' that 2D topological
quantum field theories are the same thing as commutative Frobenius
algebras, as well as the more general fact that the category of oriented 2D
cobordisms is (equivalent to) the free symmetric monoidal category on a
commutative Frobenius object.

The novelty is mostly the idea of explaining all this to undergraduates,
using it as an 'excuse' for doing category theory.  In fact, the book can
as well be seen as an introduction to monoidal categories and categorical
viewpoints, and aims also at giving the young reader an impression of unity
in mathematics, with a very close interplay between algebra and topology.

For the expert readership of this mailing list, perhaps the amount of
details presented in the book will be boring at times, but in any case I
think you will enjoy the more than 200 figures, before passing on the book
to your students...

Cheers,
Joachim.

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Joachim Kock <[email-masked]>
Département de mathématiques -- Université du Québec à Montréal
Case postale 8888, succursale centre-ville
Montréal (Québec), H3C 3P8 -- Canada
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