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{{Infobox scientist
| name = Michael Heather
| alt = Michael Heather
| birth_date = 1940
| death_date = {{death date and age|2022|9|20|1940}}
| death_place = Totnes, Devon, England, United Kingdom
| residence = Totnes, England, United Kingdom
| nationality = British
| fields = [[category theory]], information systems, foundations of physics
| workplaces = Northumbria University
| known_for = [[category theory]], [[process]], [[ANPA]]
}}

'''Michael A. Heather''' (1940 – 20 September 2022) was a British researcher whose interdisciplinary work applied [[category theory]] to information systems, the foundations of physics, and formal reasoning. Bridging physics, law and computer science, he collaborated for several decades with Nick Rossiter, with whom he co-authored more than one hundred papers, and was a long-standing contributor to the [[ANPA|Alternative Natural Philosophy Association]] (ANPA).

==Biography==
Heather worked with Nick Rossiter in the department of Computer Science and Digital Technologies at Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. His research spanned several disciplines, combining a background in physics and law with the mathematics of category theory, and he presented and published widely at international conferences including those of ANPA, the European Meeting on Cybernetics and Systems Research (EMCSR), the World Congress on Universal Logic (UNILOG) and the International Whitehead Conferences.

He remained scientifically active into his final years, presenting jointly with Rossiter at ANPA meetings up to 2022. Heather died in Totnes, Devon, on 20 September 2022. An obituary written by Nick Rossiter appeared in the proceedings of ANPA 43, ''Universum'' (2023).

==Work==
Heather's research programme sought to give a rigorous mathematical foundation to natural philosophy and information science through category theory. Working with Rossiter, he argued that category theory, and in particular the notions of adjointness, [[process]] and the topos, provides a formal language capable of describing reality as an ongoing process rather than as a collection of static objects. This approach drew heavily on the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, whose metaphysics the pair reformulated in categorical terms.

Their joint output addressed a range of topics, including the formal structure of information systems and interoperability, typing in information systems, anticipatory and process-relational systems, quantum computing and non-locality, and the application of categorical methods to law. Within ANPA, their work engaged with the Combinatorial Hierarchy and the idea of the universe as a freely generated information system. Representative papers include "The Process Category of Reality", "What is Law?: the perception of Category Theory", "Monadic Design for Universal Systems" and "Really Really Real Numbers".

==External links==
* [https://nickrossiter.org.uk/process/ Process, Reality and Category Theory] — Nick Rossiter's home page, documenting the Heather–Rossiter collaboration
* [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael-Heather Michael Heather] on ResearchGate

[[Category:Scientist|Heather Michael]]