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H-cobordism
In geometric topology and differential topology, an (''n'' + 1)-dimensional cobordism ''W'' between ''n''-dimensional manifolds ''M'' and ''N'' is an ''h''-cobordism (the ''h'' stands for homotopy equivalence) if the inclusion maps : M \hookrightarrow W \quad\mbox\quad N \hookrightarrow W are homotopy equivalences. The ''h''-cobordism theorem gives sufficient conditions for an ''h''-cobordism to be trivial, i.e., to be C-isomorphic to the cylinder ''M'' × , 1 Here C refers to any of the categories of smooth, piecewise linear, or topological manifolds. The theorem was first proved by Stephen Smale for which he received the Fields Medal and is a fundamental result in the theory of high-dimensional manifolds. For a start, it almost immediately proves the generalized Poincaré conjecture. Background Before Smale proved this theorem, mathematicians became stuck while trying to understand manifolds of dimension 3 or 4, and assumed that the higher-dimensional cases were e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Handle Decomposition
In mathematics, a handle decomposition of an ''m''-manifold ''M'' is a union \emptyset = M_ \subset M_0 \subset M_1 \subset M_2 \subset \dots \subset M_ \subset M_m = M where each M_i is obtained from M_ by the attaching of i-handles. A handle decomposition is to a manifold what a CW complex, CW-decomposition is to a topological space—in many regards the purpose of a handle decomposition is to have a language analogous to CW-complexes, but adapted to the world of smooth manifolds. Thus an ''i''-handle is the smooth analogue of an ''i''-cell. Handle decompositions of manifolds arise naturally via Morse theory. The modification of handle structures is closely linked to Cerf theory. Motivation Consider the standard CW-complex, CW-decomposition of the ''n''-sphere, with one zero cell and a single ''n''-cell. From the point of view of smooth manifolds, this is a degenerate decomposition of the sphere, as there is no natural way to see the smooth structure of S^n from the eyes of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Geometric Topology
In mathematics, geometric topology is the study of manifolds and maps between them, particularly embeddings of one manifold into another. History Geometric topology as an area distinct from algebraic topology may be said to have originated in the 1935 classification of lens spaces by Reidemeister torsion, which required distinguishing spaces that are homotopy equivalent but not homeomorphic. This was the origin of ''simple'' homotopy theory. The use of the term geometric topology to describe these seems to have originated rather recently. Differences between low-dimensional and high-dimensional topology Manifolds differ radically in behavior in high and low dimension. High-dimensional topology refers to manifolds of dimension 5 and above, or in relative terms, embeddings in codimension 3 and above. Low-dimensional topology is concerned with questions in dimensions up to 4, or embeddings in codimension up to 2. Dimension 4 is special, in that in some respects (topologica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poincaré Conjecture
In the mathematics, mathematical field of geometric topology, the Poincaré conjecture (, , ) is a theorem about the Characterization (mathematics), characterization of the 3-sphere, which is the hypersphere that bounds the unit ball in four-dimensional space. Originally conjectured by Henri Poincaré in 1904, the Grigori Perelman's theorem concerns spaces that locally look like ordinary Euclidean space, three-dimensional space but which are finite in extent. Poincaré hypothesized that if such a space has the additional property that each path (topology), loop in the space can be continuously tightened to a point, then it is necessarily a 3-sphere, three-dimensional sphere. Attempts to resolve the conjecture drove much progress in the field of geometric topology during the 20th century. The Perelman's proof built upon Richard S. Hamilton's ideas of using the Ricci flow to solve the problem. By developing a number of breakthrough new techniques and results in the theory of Ricci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dennis Barden
Dennis Barden is a mathematician at the University of Cambridge working in the fields of geometry and topology. He is known for his classification of the simply connected compact 5-manifolds and, together with Barry Mazur and John R. Stallings, for having proved the s-cobordism theorem. Barden received his Ph.D. from Cambridge in 1964 under the supervision of C. T. C. Wall. Academic Positions Barden is a Life Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge and emeritus fellow of Pembroke College. In 1991, he became Director of Studies for mathematics at Pembroke College, succeeding Raymond Lickorish. He held the position until Michaelmas 2003, and in his time saw a great increase in the number of applicants for mathematics, with consistently high performances in Tripos At the University of Cambridge, a Tripos (, plural 'Triposes') is any of the examinations that qualify an undergraduate for a bachelor's degree or the courses taken by a student to prepare for these. For example, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Stallings
John Robert Stallings Jr. (July 22, 1935 – November 24, 2008) was a mathematician known for his seminal contributions to geometric group theory and 3-manifold topology. Stallings was a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley 6, Stallings proved that ordinary Euclidean ''n''-dimensional space has a unique piecewise linear, hence also smooth, structure, if ''n'' is not equal to 4. This took on added significance when, as a consequence of work of Michael Freedman and Simon Donaldson in 1982, it was shown that 4-space has exotic smooth structures, in fact uncountably many such. In a 1963 paper Stallings constructed an example of a finitely presented group with infinitely generated 3-dimensional integral homology group and, moreover, not of the type F_3 , that is, not admitting a classifying space with a finite 3-skeleton. This example came to be called the ''Stallings group'' and is a key example in the study of homological fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barry Mazur
Barry Charles Mazur (; born December 19, 1937) is an American mathematician and the Gerhard Gade University Professor at Harvard University. His contributions to mathematics include his contributions to Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem in number theory, Mazur's torsion theorem in arithmetic geometry, the Mazur swindle in geometric topology, and the Mazur manifold in differential topology. Life Born in New York City, Mazur attended the Bronx High School of Science and MIT, although he did not graduate from the latter on account of failing a then-present ROTC requirement. He was nonetheless accepted for graduate studies at Princeton University, from where he received his PhD in mathematics in 1959 after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "On embeddings of spheres." He then became a Junior Fellow at Harvard University from 1961 to 1964. He is the Gerhard Gade University Professor and a Senior Fellow at Harvard. He is the brother of Joseph Mazur and the father of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simple-homotopy Equivalence
In mathematics, particularly the area of topology, a simple-homotopy equivalence is a refinement of the concept of homotopy equivalence. Two CW-complexes are simple-homotopy equivalent if they are related by a sequence of collapses and expansions (inverses of collapses), and a homotopy equivalence is a simple homotopy equivalence if it is homotopic to such a map. The obstruction to a homotopy equivalence being a simple homotopy equivalence is the Whitehead torsion, \tau(f). A homotopy theory that studies simple-homotopy types is called simple homotopy theory. See also * Discrete Morse theory Discrete Morse theory is a combinatorial adaptation of Morse theory developed by Robin Forman. The theory has various practical applications in diverse fields of applied mathematics and computer science, such as configuration spaces, homology com ... References * Homotopy theory Equivalence (mathematics) {{topology-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whitehead Torsion
In geometric topology, a field within mathematics, the obstruction to a homotopy equivalence f\colon X \to Y of finite CW-complexes being a simple homotopy equivalence is its Whitehead torsion \tau(f) which is an element in the Whitehead group \operatorname(\pi_1(Y)). These concepts are named after the mathematician J. H. C. Whitehead. The Whitehead torsion is important in applying surgery theory to non- simply connected manifolds of dimension > 4: for simply-connected manifolds, the Whitehead group vanishes, and thus homotopy equivalences and simple homotopy equivalences are the same. The applications are to differentiable manifolds, PL manifolds and topological manifolds. The proofs were first obtained in the early 1960s by Stephen Smale, for differentiable manifolds. The development of handlebody theory allowed much the same proofs in the differentiable and PL categories. The proofs are much harder in the topological category, requiring the theory of Robion Kirby and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cobordism
In mathematics, cobordism is a fundamental equivalence relation on the class of compact manifolds of the same dimension, set up using the concept of the boundary (French '' bord'', giving ''cobordism'') of a manifold. Two manifolds of the same dimension are ''cobordant'' if their disjoint union is the ''boundary'' of a compact manifold one dimension higher. The boundary of an (''n'' + 1)-dimensional manifold ''W'' is an ''n''-dimensional manifold ∂''W'' that is closed, i.e., with empty boundary. In general, a closed manifold need not be a boundary: cobordism theory is the study of the difference between all closed manifolds and those that are boundaries. The theory was originally developed by René Thom for smooth manifolds (i.e., differentiable), but there are now also versions for piecewise linear and topological manifolds. A ''cobordism'' between manifolds ''M'' and ''N'' is a compact manifold ''W'' whose boundary is the disjoint union of ''M'' and ''N'', \partial ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ricci Flow
In the mathematical fields of differential geometry and geometric analysis, the Ricci flow ( , ), sometimes also referred to as Hamilton's Ricci flow, is a certain partial differential equation for a Riemannian metric. It is often said to be analogous to the diffusion of heat and the heat equation, due to formal similarities in the mathematical structure of the equation. However, it is nonlinear and exhibits many phenomena not present in the study of the heat equation. The Ricci flow, so named for the presence of the Ricci tensor in its definition, was introduced by Richard Hamilton, who used it through the 1980s to prove striking new results in Riemannian geometry. Later extensions of Hamilton's methods by various authors resulted in new applications to geometry, including the resolution of the differentiable sphere conjecture by Simon Brendle and Richard Schoen. Following Shing-Tung Yau's suggestion that the singularities of solutions of the Ricci flow could identify the topo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard S
Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from Old Frankish and is a compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' and ''*hardu-'' 'strong, brave, hardy', and it therefore means 'strong in rule'. Nicknames include "Richie", "Dick", "Dickon", " Dickie", "Rich", "Rick", "Rico", "Ricky", and more. Richard is a common English, German and French male name. It's also used in many more languages, particularly Germanic, such as Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, and Dutch, as well as other languages including Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Finnish. Richard is cognate with variants of the name in other European languages, such as the Swedish "Rickard", the Catalan "Ricard" and the Italian "Riccardo", among others (see comprehensive variant list below). People named Richard Multiple people with the same name * Richard Andersen (other) * Richard Anderson (other) * Richard Cartwright (other) * Ri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grigori Perelman
Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman ( rus, links=no, Григорий Яковлевич Перельман, p=ɡrʲɪˈɡorʲɪj ˈjakəvlʲɪvʲɪtɕ pʲɪrʲɪlʲˈman, a=Ru-Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman.oga; born 13 June 1966) is a Russian mathematician who is known for his contributions to the fields of geometric analysis, Riemannian geometry, and geometric topology. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest living mathematicians. In the 1990s, partly in collaboration with Yuri Burago, Mikhael Gromov, and Anton Petrunin, he made contributions to the study of Alexandrov spaces. In 1994, he proved the soul conjecture in Riemannian geometry, which had been an open problem for the previous 20 years. In 2002 and 2003, he developed new techniques in the analysis of Ricci flow, and proved the Poincaré conjecture and Thurston's geometrization conjecture, the former of which had been a famous open problem in mathematics for the past century. The full details of Perelman's work were fil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
