Samuel Eilenberg (September 30, 1913-January 30, 1998) was a Polish mathematician. He was born in Warsaw, Poland and died in New York, USA where he had spent much of his career as a professor at Columbia University.

His main interest was algebraic topology. He worked on the axiomatic treatment of homology theory with Norman Steenrod (whose names the Eilenberg-Steenrod axioms bear), and on homological algebra with Saunders Mac Lane, wrote a book on homological algebra with Henri Cartan that became a classic, and took part in the Bourbaki group meetings. Later in life he worked mainly in pure category theory, being one of the founders of the field. The Eilenberg telescope is a surprising construction, applying the telescoping cancellation idea to projective modules. Eilenberg also wrote an important book on automata theory.

The X-machine (a form of automaton) was introduced in 1974 by Samuel Eilenberg.

See also

• Saunders Mac Lane
• Stefan Banach
• Stanisław Ulam

References

• S.Eilenberg. Automata, Languages and Machines. ISBN 0122340019

External links

• Eilenberg's biography − from the National Academies Press, by Hyman Bass, Henri Cartan, Peter Freyd, Alex Heller and Saunders Mac Lane.

1913 births | 1998 deaths | Category theory | Jewish mathematicians | Polish mathematicians | Topologists

Samuel Eilenberg | Samuel Eilenberg | サミュエル・アイレンベルグ | Samuel Eilenberg