I report below Francis Borceux’s response to my request for a
clarification (in italic),
followed by my reply to it.
Dear Olivia,
It is now
already seven years ago that I stopped doing research and somehow,
abandoned every contact with the international category theory
community.
I understand
from your message that some polemics exists between yourself and some
members of the "categorical world". If so, I sincerely regret it.
This kind of
situation occurs from time to time. In some cases, the divergence of
points of view is the opportunity to confront ideas and go further. In
other cases, it simply results in frustrations and a big loss of energy.
And the situation becomes even worst when it enters the field of
personal relations, not just mathematical ideas. Everything depends on
the attitude of the various actors of the polemics and the respect that
they show or not in front of their colleagues.
Myself, I have
been confronted to an uncomfortable situation of that type, at some
Oberwolfach meeting, as a young mathematician, in the years '70.
Some people
claimed that my results did already exist in one form or the other in
some unpublished work of them. I had to answer the objection and without
too much thinking, I said: "Oh, if we are several people to have had
these same ideas, certainly they must be very interesting". The audience
laughed and since that day, people were naturally coming to me to
confront their ideas with mines, instead of making sterile claims of
priority. Of course, sometimes I have been disappointed to notice that
my results were used in some papers or talks ... and that credit for
these was unduly given to somebody else; but again, I decided never to
react about that. And I must confess that I have had a "peaceful
career".
I remember that one day, when I was already retired, Marino Gran
invited you to give a talk in Louvain-la-Neuve. He insisted so much that
eventually, I attended your talk: a true exception since I had promised
myself no longer to attend mathematical talks. I had been impressed by
your talk, by the extent and the deepness of your views on topos theory.
I said then to Marino that I was convinced that you
would make a brilliant career. But having given up research, this talk
has been my only contact with your mathematical work. Therefore I can by
no means answer your questions about your work.
Let me just hope that all the actors of the present polemics,
starting with yourself, will find the necessary serenity, moderation
and sense of responsibilities, to allow the mathematical
community to take full advantage of your beautiful ideas and
competences.
Kindly yours
Francis Borceux
Dear Professor Borceux,
I thank you very much for your response and your positive remarks about
my work. Your letter importantly shows that it is current habit among
certain category theorists to claim priority for unpublished results
presented by some young researcher, especially when they realize that
they could be important. As explained
here, I
have tried to avoid any polemics throughout the past five years with the
experts from which I had received such accusation and to engage in a
fruitful scientific dialogue with them, but my collaborative
propositions have been systematically refused. The only thing that
really seemed to interest these experts is that I attribute the results
that I happened to discover on my own and for which there were not any
traces in the literature (or in alternative recorded forms) to them by
specifying that they “knew everything already”. Of course, I could not
accept these intimidations, which are ethically incorrect and go against
the general rules of the scientific community as far as it concerns
attribution of results to authors. This was enough to generate a
denigratory campaign against me based on the accusation that “large
parts of my work are folklore” and on personal attacks such as “she
thinks of herself more highly than anyone else” etc.
I am happy to say that this initiative of clarification has been very
useful, as it has emerged very clearly that such accusations were
ungrounded (none of the contacted experts was able to provide a single
reference containing a proof or a statement of a result that I
attributed to myself but which had been proved before, nor anyone showed
that any of my results could be deduced from previously existing results
in an essentially straightforward way).
Best regards,
Olivia Caramello