Peter J. Freyd is an American mathematician

Mathematician

A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....

, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

, known for work in category theory

Category theory

Category theory is an area of study in mathematics that examines in an abstract way the properties of particular mathematical concepts, by formalising them as collections of objects and arrows , where these collections satisfy certain basic conditions...

 and for founding the False Memory Syndrome Foundation

False Memory Syndrome Foundation

The False Memory Syndrome Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in 1992 by Pamela and Peter Freyd, after being accused by their adult daughter Jennifer Freyd of sexual abuse when she was a child...

.

Mathematical work

Freyd is perhaps best known as the author of the foundational book Abelian Categories: An Introduction to the Theory of Functors. This work culminates in a proof of Mitchell's embedding theorem

Mitchell's embedding theorem

Mitchell's embedding theorem, also known as the Freyd–Mitchell theorem, is a result stating that every abelian category admits a full and exact embedding into the category of R-modules...

.

False Memory Syndrome Foundation

Freyd and his wife Pamela founded the False Memory Syndrome Foundation

False Memory Syndrome Foundation

The False Memory Syndrome Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in 1992 by Pamela and Peter Freyd, after being accused by their adult daughter Jennifer Freyd of sexual abuse when she was a child...

 in 1992, after Freyd was accused of sexual abuse by his daughter Jennifer

Jennifer Freyd

Jennifer J. Freyd is an American psychologist, Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon, and editor of the Journal of Trauma & Dissociation...

. Freyd denies the accusations.

Publications

• Peter J. Freyd, Abelian Categories, an Introduction to the Theory of Functors. Harper & Row (1964). Available online.
• Peter J. Freyd and Andre Scedrov: Categories, Allegories. North-Holland (1999). ISBN 0444703683.
• Peter J. Freyd: Path Integrals, Bayesian Vision, and Is Gaussian Quadrature Really Good? Electr. Notes Theor. Comput. Sci. 29: (1999)
• Peter J. Freyd, Peter W. O'Hearn, A. John Power, Makoto Takeyama, R. Street, Robert D. Tennent: Bireflectivity. Theor. Comput. Sci. 228(1–2): 49–76 (1999)

External links

• Printable versions of Abelian categories, an introduction to the theory of functors.