Page 7 - Textos de Matemática Vol. 46

FOREWORD
A Workshop on Categorical Methods in Algebra and Topology was held at the University of Coimbra January 24-26, 2014, to honour Professor Manuela Sobral on the occasion of her seventieth birthday. With 57 mathematicians from eleven countries in attendance, the event brought together leading researchers from around the globe whose work is related to Manuela Sobral’s areas of scientific specialization. This volume gives its readers a glimpse at the intense scientific program of the three-day event.
After her first mathematics degree obtained from the University of Coimbra in 1965 and subsequent assistantships at Coimbra and Porto, Manuela Sobral followed her husband Jos´e for a decade-long stay in Mozambique and Angola before returning to Coimbra in 1975. While in southern Africa she began her postgraduate studies by correspondence at the University of South Africa, ob- taining a Master’s degree from UNISA in 1978 and defending her Ph. D. in 1984. Since then she held successive academic appointments at the Univer- sity of Coimbra, as Professora Auxiliar, Associada and, after obtaining her Agrega¸c˜ao in 2002, Catedra´tica. She now carries the title Professora Jubilada.
In her extensive published work Manuela Sobral made significant contribu- tions to Category Theory, especially to the theory of monads and their appli- cations to other fields, such as Grothendieck’s descent theory. With her strong commitment to excellence in teaching she supervised seven Master’s and four Ph. D. theses, as well as several post-doctoral fellowships. Most of her stu- dents went on to pursue successful academic careers. Throughout her three decades as a professor in Coimbra, among many other initiatives, she actively engaged herself in building international connections, playing leading roles in various European and transatlantic projects, under the TEMPUS, ERASMUS and SOCRATES frameworks. Her and her former students’ commitment to col- laboration across boarders has made Coimbra one of the thriving international centres of category theory. For further information on her work we refer the reader to the first article in this volume.
This volume contains research articles covering a broad range of topics in algebra and topology, with most of them employing and developing categorical methods. They make contributions to general, topological, homological, and linear algebra, general and point-free topology, and to category theory itself.
As guest editors we are grateful to the Department of Mathematics of the University of Coimbra and especially to the editors of Textos de Matem´atica, Maria Paula Oliveira, Ana Paula Santana and Ju´lio Neves, for dedicating a spe- cial volume to the proceedings of the Workshop. We acknowledge in particular