Intuitive Concepts In Elementary Topology

"Classroom-tested and much-cited, this concise text is designed for undergraduates. It offers a valuable and instructive introduction to the basic concepts of topology, taking an intuitive rather than an axiomatic viewpoint. Well illustrated with figuresand diagrams, it can serve as either a primary text or a valuable supplement. 1962 edition"--

Classroom-tested and much-cited, this concise text is designed for undergraduates. It offers a valuable and instructive introduction to the basic concepts of topology, taking an intuitive rather than an axiomatic viewpoint. 1962 edition.

Concise work presents topological concepts in clear, elementary fashion, from basics of set-theoretic topology, through topological theorems and questions based on concept of the algebraic complex, to the concept of Betti groups. Includes 25 figures.

This text contains a detailed introduction to general topology and an introduction to algebraic topology via its most classical and elementary segment. Proofs of theorems are separated from their formulations and are gathered at the end of each chapter, making this book appear like a problem book and also giving it appeal to the expert as a handbook. The book includes about 1,000 exercises.

This book is an introduction to elementary topology presented in an intuitive way, emphasizing the visual aspect. Examples of nontrivial and often unexpected topological phenomena acquaint the reader with the picturesque world of knots, links, vector fields, and two-dimensional surfaces. The book begins with definitions presented in a tangible and perceptible way, on an everyday level, and progressively makes them more precise and rigorous, eventually reaching the level of fairly sophisticated proofs. This allows meaningful problems to be tackled from the outset. Another unusual trait of this book is that it deals mainly with constructions and maps, rather than with proofs that certain maps and constructions do or do not exist. The numerous illustrations are an essential feature. The book is accessible not only to undergraduates but also to high school students and will interest any reader who has some feeling for the visual elegance of geometry and topology.

Topology is a relatively young and very important branch of mathematics, which studies the properties of objects that are preserved through deformations, twistings, and stretchings. This book deals with the topology of curves and surfaces as well as with the fundamental concepts of homotopy and homology, and does this in a lively and well-motivated way. This book is well suited for readers who are interested in finding out what topology is all about.

Topology is a branch of mathematics packed with intriguing concepts, fascinating geometrical objects, and ingenious methods for studying them. The authors have written this textbook to make the material accessible to undergraduate students without requiring extensive prerequisites in upper-level mathematics. The approach is to cultivate the intuitive ideas of continuity, convergence, and connectedness so students can quickly delve into knot theory, the topology of surfaces and three-dimensional manifolds, fixed points and elementary homotopy theory. The fundamental concepts of point-set topology appear at the end of the book when students can see how this level of abstraction provides a sound logical basis for the geometrical ideas that have come before. This organization exposes students to the exciting world of topology now(!) rather than later. Students using this textbook should have some exposure to the geometry of objects in higher-dimensional Euclidean spaces together with an appreciation of precise mathematical definitions and proofs.