The category of matroids (Q1743610)

Below I cite the abstract of the authors. I feel that there is no better way to describe the contents, results and problems of the subject in a compact way. The topic itself certainly deserves attention. So I consider this a very important publication. There are many questions which might be considered in the sequel, in particular other morphisms, that is, not only strong maps. It would be good to consider also publications on matroids by \textit{M. Aigner} [Kombinatorik. Teil II: Matroide und Transversaltheorie. Hochschultext. Berlin-Heidelberg-New York: Springer-Verlag. XVIII (1976; Zbl 0373.05002)] and later. ``The structure of the category of matroids and strong maps is investigated: it has coproducts and equalizers, but not products or coequalizers; there are functors from the categories of graphs and vector spaces, the latter being faithful and having a nearly full Kan extension; there is a functor to the category of geometric lattices, that is nearly full; there are various adjunctions and free constructions on subcategories, inducing a simplification monad; there are two orthogonal factorization systems; some, but not many, combinatorial constructions from matroid theory are functorial. Finally, a characterization of matroids in terms of optimality of the greedy algorithm can be rephrased in terms of limits.''