"In establishing the tasks to be undertaken by Bourbaki, significant progress was made with the adoption of the notion of structure, and of the related notion of isomorphism. Retrospectively these two concepts seem ordinary and rather short on mathematical content, unless the notions of morphism and category are added. At the time of our early work these notions cast new light upon subjects which were still shrouded in confusion: even the meaning of the term "isomorphism" varied from one theory to another. That there were simple structures of group, of topological space, etc., and then also more complex structures, from rings to fields, had not to my knowledge been said by anyone before Bourbaki, and it was something that needed to be said. As for the choice of the word "structure," my memory fails me; but at that time, I believe, it had already entered the working vocabulary of linguists, a milieu with which I had maintained ties (in particular with Émile Benveniste)."
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