![]() This is no coincidence: like category theory, the art of the pastry chef is one of the most exacting, but also one of the most delightful, thanks to the elegance of its results. Her book has recipes, but it’s no mere cookbook.Īmong all forms of cooking, it seems Cheng’s favorite is the baking of desserts-and among all forms of mathematics, category theory. Cheng shows the flip side of this analogy, providing plenty of insight into mathematics by exploring its resemblance to the culinary arts. ![]() Sometimes people complain about a math textbook that it’s “just a cookbook”, offering recipes but no insight. Here’s my review of Eugenia’s book for the London Mathematical Society Newsletter:Įugenia Cheng has written a delightfully clear and down-to-earth explanation of the spirit of mathematics, and in particular category theory, based on their similarities to cooking. It’s nice to see she’s bringing math and even category theory to a large audience. I visited Cambridge for the first time around then, and we wound up becoming friends. I’m looking forward to this because while Eugenia learned category theory as a grad student at Cambridge, mainly from her advisor Martin Hyland and Peter Johnstone, Hyland became interested in n-categories and Eugenia wound up doing her thesis on the opetopic approach to n-categories which James Dolan and I had dreamt up.
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