Charles Wells (mathematician) explained

Charles Frederick Wells (4 May 1937 in Atlanta, Georgia – 17 June 2017)^{[1] [2]} was an American mathematician known for his fundamental contributions to category theory. He was Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Case Western Reserve University.^[3]

Wells taught there for about 35 years, with sabbatical interruptions at ETH Zürich (in mathematics) and Oxford University (in computing science). He had a research career in mathematics in finite fields, group theory and category theory. In the last twenty years of this life he had also been interested in the language of mathematics and related issues concerning teaching and communicating abstract ideas.

Publications

In addition to his scholarly publications, Wells produced A Handbook of Mathematical Discourse,^{[4] [5]} which is a dictionary of words and concepts used by mathematicians that are easily misunderstood, explained in a way that laypersons can also appreciate.

As a life-long shape note singer, in 2002 Wells jointly compiled a tunebook called Oberlin Harmony,^[6] which included some of his own compositions.

Books

• • Michael Barr and Charles Wells: Category Theory for Computing Science (1999).

Surveys

• Sketches (1993) – a survey of the literature on sketches

External links

• Web site: Charles Wells . . 2012-02-15 . https://web.archive.org/web/20161231073212/http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/math/wells/home.html . 2016-12-31 . dead .
• Gyre & Gimble – blog on the language of math, category theory, and teaching abstract ideas
• Abstract Math – for university-level math students

Notes and References

1. Birth and Career Data from American Men and Women of Science, Thomson Gale 2004
2. News: misterZ3r0 . Update on AbstractMath.org: a website that provided an introduction to advanced mathematics . 2 November 2024 . reddit/learnmath . 26 June 2017 . https://web.archive.org/web/20180322031150/https://www.reddit.com/r/learnmath/comments/6jhygc/update_on_abstractmathorg_a_website_that_provided/ . 22 March 2018 . I am sorry to inform the community that Professor Charles Wells who ran the website as a free resource passed away on June 17, 2017. I received a reply to an email inquiring Professor Wells why the website was down. Here was the reply: Hi Eugene... this Matt Wells, Charles' son. Sad to report that Dad died suddenly and peacefully on Saturday night. He left behind all of the instructions on how to fix the website, so we'll figure it out eventually. matt.
3. Web site: Home page at CWRU . 2012-02-15 . https://web.archive.org/web/20161231073212/http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/math/wells/home.html . 2016-12-31 . dead .
4. Negative review:
5. Positive review:
6. Charles Wells, Chloe Maher, Oberlin Harmony (2002, Oberlin, Ohio). Incomplete table of contents given in: Web site: Oberlin Harmony . . Hymnary.org . 18 January 2020 .