Some mathematical projects are less about proving theorems and more about bringing people together. Editing the special volume of Theory and Applications of Categories in honor of Marta Bunge felt very much like that.
I worked on it together with Maria Manuel Clementino and Jonathan Funk, and what stayed with me throughout was not just the range of mathematics in the papers, but the sense of a community that Marta helped build—across countries, generations, and styles of doing category theory.
One piece of the volume that is particularly close to my heart is the Remembrances postface. I wrote it with Andrée Ehresmann and Silvia Bunge, Marta’s daughter. We wanted to say something about Marta that doesn’t usually make it into journal articles: her generosity, her way of mentoring, and the many personal connections that sustained her mathematical life.
Another part of this project that I’m especially happy about is that we managed to republish Marta’s PhD thesis as a TAC reprint. The thesis, supervised by Peter Freyd and William Lawvere, is a beautiful piece of work, and making it accessible again felt long overdue.
And here is where the story becomes very much about people. Eric Bunge and Silvia Bunge scanned a copy of the thesis—but, as these things go, a few pages were missing. That could have stalled the whole effort. Instead, it set off a small chain of generosity: after a message from Prof. Michael Barr, Pamela Freyd arranged for the librarian at Penn to send us a complete digital version.
At that point came another remarkable contribution: Nathanael Arkor sat down and typed the entire thesis—quickly and carefully—turning a set of scans into a clean, usable document. It’s the kind of work that is easy to overlook, but absolutely essential if we want mathematical texts to remain alive and accessible. Many others helped along the way, including Matías Menni and Maria Manuel Clementino, and the whole process ended up feeling like a genuine collective effort.
There is one more piece of the story that I find especially meaningful. Marta’s personal collection of books has now been donated to the Mathematics Library of the University of São Paulo, thanks to the generosity of Eric and Silvia Bunge, who made sure the books were shipped there. I would also like to thank Stella Madruga, who helped receive and set up the collection, and Prof. Hugo Mariano, who helped make the connection in the first place. It’s hard to imagine a better continuation of a mathematical life than having one’s books find new readers.
Looking back, this volume is of course a mathematical object. But it is also something else: a trace of a network of people, ideas, and acts of care that continue to shape the field.
If you’d like to take a look:
The foreword to the volume is here: http://www.tac.mta.ca/tac/volumes/40/fwd/40-fwd.pdf
The reprinted thesis is here: http://198.164.44.141/tac/reprints/articles/30/tr30.pdf
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