| Peter Johnstone | |
| Birth Date: | 28 December 1948 |
| Alma Mater: | University of Cambridge |
| Field: | Mathematics |
| Thesis Title: | Some Aspects of Internal Category Theory in an Elementary Topos |
| Thesis Year: | 1974 |
| Doctoral Advisor: | John Frank Adams |
| Known For: | Category theory Topos theory Logic |
| Prizes: | Whitehead Prize (1979)[1] |
Peter Tennant Johnstone (born December 28, 1948) is Professor of the Foundations of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of St. John's College.[2] He invented or developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in topos theory. His thesis, completed at the University of Cambridge in 1974, was entitled "Some Aspects of Internal Category Theory in an Elementary Topos".[3]
Peter Johnstone is a choral singer, having sung for over thirty years with the Cambridge University Musical Society and since 2004 with the (London) Bach Choir. Following a severe bout of COVID-19 in 2020, he was invited by the Bach Choir's musical director David Hill to provide the text for a new choral work about the pandemic which the Choir commissioned from the composer Richard Blackford; the piece, `Vision of a Garden', was performed at the Bach Choir's first post-lockdown concert in October 2021 in the Royal Festival Hall, london, and again in July 2023 in King's College Chapel, Cambridge.[4]
He is a great-great-great nephew of the Reverend George Gilfillan who was eulogised in William McGonagall's first poem.[5]
- "[F]ar too hard to read, and not for the faint-hearted"[6]