Lectures On Differential Topology

This book gives a comprehensive introduction to the theory of smooth manifolds, maps, and fundamental associated structures with an emphasis on “bare hands” approaches, combining differential-topological cut-and-paste procedures and applications of transversality. In particular, the smooth cobordism cup-product is defined from scratch and used as the main tool in a variety of settings. After establishing the fundamentals, the book proceeds to a broad range of more advanced topics in differential topology, including degree theory, the Poincaré-Hopf index theorem, bordism-characteristic numbers, and the Pontryagin-Thom construction. Cobordism intersection forms are used to classify compact surfaces; their quadratic enhancements are developed and applied to studying the homotopy groups of spheres, the bordism group of immersed surfaces in a 3-manifold, and congruences mod 16 for the signature of intersection forms of 4-manifolds. Other topics include the high-dimensional h h-cobordism theorem stressing the role of the “Whitney trick”, a determination of the singleton bordism modules in low dimensions, and proofs of parallelizability of orientable 3-manifolds and the Lickorish-Wallace theorem. Nash manifolds and Nash's questions on the existence of real algebraic models are also discussed. This book will be useful as a textbook for beginning masters and doctoral students interested in differential topology, who have finished a standard undergraduate mathematics curriculum. It emphasizes an active learning approach, and exercises are included within the text as part of the flow of ideas. Experienced readers may use this book as a source of alternative, constructive approaches to results commonly presented in more advanced contexts with specialized techniques.

This book gives a comprehensive introduction to the theory of smooth manifolds, maps, and fundamental associated structures with an emphasis on "bare hands" approaches, combining differential-topological cut-and-paste procedures and applications of transversality. In particular, the smooth cobordism cup-product is defined from scratch and used as the main tool in a variety of settings. After establishing the fundamentals, the book proceeds to a broad range of more advanced topics in differential topology, including degree theory, the Poincaré-Hopf index theorem, bordism-characteristic number.

This book gives a comprehensive introduction to the theory of smooth manifolds, maps, and fundamental associated structures with an emphasis on “bare hands” approaches, combining differential-topological cut-and-paste procedures and applications of transversality. In particular, the smooth cobordism cup-product is defined from scratch and used as the main tool in a variety of settings. After establishing the fundamentals, the book proceeds to a broad range of more advanced topics in differential topology, including degree theory, the Poincaré-Hopf index theorem, bordism-characteristic numbers, and the Pontryagin-Thom construction. Cobordism intersection forms are used to classify compact surfaces; their quadratic enhancements are developed and applied to studying the homotopy groups of spheres, the bordism group of immersed surfaces in a 3-manifold, and congruences mod 16 for the signature of intersection forms of 4-manifolds. Other topics include the high-dimensional h h-cobordism theorem stressing the role of the “Whitney trick”, a determination of the singleton bordism modules in low dimensions, and proofs of parallelizability of orientable 3-manifolds and the Lickorish-Wallace theorem. Nash manifolds and Nash's questions on the existence of real algebraic models are also discussed. This book will be useful as a textbook for beginning masters and doctoral students interested in differential topology, who have finished a standard undergraduate mathematics curriculum. It emphasizes an active learning approach, and exercises are included within the text as part of the flow of ideas. Experienced readers may use this book as a source of alternative, constructive approaches to results commonly presented in more advanced contexts with specialized techniques.

This elegant book by distinguished mathematician John Milnor, provides a clear and succinct introduction to one of the most important subjects in modern mathematics. Beginning with basic concepts such as diffeomorphisms and smooth manifolds, he goes on to examine tangent spaces, oriented manifolds, and vector fields. Key concepts such as homotopy, the index number of a map, and the Pontryagin construction are discussed. The author presents proofs of Sard's theorem and the Hopf theorem.

This book is intended as an elementary introduction to differential manifolds. The authors concentrate on the intuitive geometric aspects and explain not only the basic properties but also teach how to do the basic geometrical constructions. An integral part of the work are the many diagrams which illustrate the proofs. The text is liberally supplied with exercises and will be welcomed by students with some basic knowledge of analysis and topology.