Cornell Math - MATH 661, Fall 2004

MATH 661: Geometric Topology (Fall 2004)

CANCELLED

Instructor: James West

Meeting Time & Room

We will study the topology of polyhedra and of manifolds using only tools that we develop in the course. In particular, we will develop the foundations of "piecewise-linear" methods and also study some examples we can construct using continuous homeomorphisms. The only background needed will be an undergraduate course in topology, that is, compactness, connectivity, and basic metric space notions. The idea will be not to use differential or algebraic techniques (unless we are led to them by our investigations.) Specific results will depend to some extent on the interests of the students.