Michael Makkai (24 June 1939 in Budapest, Hungary) is Canadian mathematician of Hungarian origin, specializing in mathematical logic. He works in model theory, category theory, algebraic logic, type theory and the theory of topoi.

Career

Academic biography

Makkai was awarded his PhD from the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, in 1966, having been supervised by Rózsa Péter and Andrzej Mostowski. He then worked at the Mathematical Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Between 1974 and 2010, he was professor of mathematics at McGill University, retiring in 2010. He is also an external member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1995).

Work

With Leo Harrington and Saharon Shelah he proved the Vaught conjecture for ω-stable theories. With Robert Paré he further developed the theory of Accessible Categories. Makkai has an Erdős number of 1, having published "Some Remarks on Set Theory, X" with Paul Erdős in 1966.

Selected publications