  This paper is a study of monoidal categories with duals where the tensor
product need not be commutative. The motivating examples are categories of
representations of Hopf algebras and the motivating application is the
definition of 6j-symbols as used in topological field theories.
  We introduce the new notion of a spherical category. In the first section we
prove a coherence theorem for a monoidal category with duals following MacLane
(1963). In the second section we give the definition of a spherical category,
and construct a natural quotient which is also spherical.
  In the third section we define spherical Hopf algebras so that the category
of representations is spherical. Examples of spherical Hopf algebras are
involutory Hopf algebras and ribbon Hopf algebras. Finally we study the natural
quotient in these cases and show it is semisimple.
