> Greub, Halperin, and van Stone's three volume set called Connections,
> Curvature, and Cohomology spends the third volume reconstructing a
> version of algebraic topology based on differential forms that is
> referred to by Weil (vol. 2 of his collected works, p. 527) as the
> basis for a treatise on 'topologie combinatoire' by Bourbaki (July
> 1945). As I understand it, work on this led to a first draft by
> Chevalley, Cartan, Koszul and Weil around 1950 (Has anyone access to
> it? I have never seen it) when algebraic topology achieved considerable
> success on pressing questions in homotopy theory through the use of
> singular homology theory. The intended treatise was then abandoned.
>
> John McCleary
Most interesting! Nevertheless Chevalley seems prone to this type of fact
(or story?).
May I recount an anecdote told us by Jean Benabou at his Cat/'egories
Seminar in Paris: Chevalley had written an extensive treatise on Category
Theory where *everything* about limits and colimits was proved rigorously.
However he took the manuscript with him on a journey to the USA and it
somehow got lost. There were no backup copies.
Se non e vero, e bene trovatto...
Michel Eytan eytan@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr