Since the mid 1970s there has been a remarkably successful marriage of ideas and techniques between category theory on the one hand and model theory and logic on the other. This was first distilled in the 1977 monograph First Order Categorical Logic by M Makkai and G Reyes, which successfully combined traditional model theory with Grothendieck toposes. In the succeeding years, Makkai has built up an impressive body of work in several related fields: categorical model theory, first order logic with dependent sorts, higher dimensional category theory, and most importantly, a coherent and far reaching view of categorical logic in mathematical foundations.

Such a meeting is timely for several reasons: not only the occasion of Makkai's 70th birthday year, but also because recently there has been a widening consensus that traditional model theory might usefully embrace the categorical methods he pioneered. Traditional model theory is set-based; in contrast, there has been an increasing use of category-theoretic (specifically including sheaf-theoretic) contexts and techniques in recent model-theoretic work in such areas as algebraic geometry, differential algebra, Mordell-Lang theory, etc.

The focus of the meeting will be traditional model theory, categorical model theory and logics, and higher-dimensional category theory (the main themes in Makkai's research career). We hope to have a number of Michael's former and current colleagues and students as speakers at the meeting.

There will be a "Makkai Workshop" at Burnside Hall, McGill University on June18, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

On Thursday, June 18 at 6:00 pm there will be a reception at CRM, room 6245 at the Pavillon André-Aisenstadt on the Université de Montréal campus (see campus map). Talks are scheduled on the 19th and 20th of June, ending late afternoon on the 20th.