Ehresmann's introduction of differentiable groupoids in the 1950s may be seen as a starting point for two diverging lines of research, many-object Lie theory (the study of Lie algebroids and Lie groupoids) and sketch theory. This thesis uses tangent categories to build a bridge between these two lines of research, providing a structural account of Lie algebroids and the Lie functor. To accomplish this, we develop the theory of involution algebroids, which are a tangent-categorical sketch of Lie algebroids. We show that the category of Lie algebroids is precisely the category of involution algebroids in smooth manifolds, and that the category of Weil algebras is precisely the classifying category of an involution algebroid. This exhibits the category of Lie algebroids as a tangent-categorical functor category, and the Lie functor via precomposition with a functor $\partial: \mathsf{Weil}_1 \to \mathcal{T}_{\mathsf{Gpd}},$ bringing Lie algebroids and the Lie functor into the realm of functorial semantics.

A tangent category is a category equipped with an endofunctor that satisfies certain axioms which capture the abstract properties of the tangent bundle functor from classical differential geometry. Cockett and Cruttwell introduced differential bundles in 2017 as an algebraic alternative to vector bundles in an arbitrary tangent category. In this paper, we prove that differential bundles in the category of smooth manifolds are precisely vector bundles. In particular, this means that we can give a characterisation of vector bundles that exhibits them as models of a tangent categorical essentially algebraic theory.

The reverse derivative is a fundamental operation in machine learning and automatic differentiation. This paper gives a direct axiomatization of a category with a reverse derivative operation, in a similar style to that given by Cartesian differential categories for a forward derivative. Intriguingly, a category with a reverse derivative also has a forward derivative, but the converse is not true. In fact, we show explicitly what a forward derivative is missing: a reverse derivative is equivalent to a forward derivative with a dagger structure on its subcategory of linear maps. Furthermore, we show that these linear maps form an additively enriched category with dagger biproducts.

We define involution algebroids which generalise Lie algebroids to the abstract setting of tangent categories. As a part of this generalisation the Jacobi identity which appears in classical Lie theory is replaced by an identity similar to the Yang-Baxter equation. Every classical Lie algebroid has the structure of an involution algebroid and every involution algebroid in a tangent category admits a Lie bracket on the sections of its underlying bundle. As an illustrative application we take the first steps in developing the homotopy theory of involution algebroids.