# Monthly Archives: July 2013

## Characteristic Classes

The next section of the book, available here, gives a very quick introduction to what the Pontrjagin classes are.  This is really just a refresher – I am sure it is too terse for someone who has never seen characteristic … Continue reading

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## Manifold Sins and Wickedness

In the previous post I mentioned the two categories of manifolds with which we’re going to be mostly concerned: smooth manifolds, equipped with an atlas whose transition maps are $$C^\infty$$, and topological manifolds (locally Euclidean spaces).  Smooth manifolds are, of … Continue reading

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## What Surgery Is About: Manifolds

Now I’ll begin to post material from the book proper.  Here is the first section of Chapter I.  I’m going to try to post stuff in bite-size pieces like this, rather than a whole chapter at a time. Of course, … Continue reading

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## Bonn Summer School on Topology of High Dimensional Manifolds

Wolfgang Luck,  Diarmuid Crowley and Tibor Macko are organizing a summer school in Bonn on The Topology of High-Dimensional Manifolds.  It takes place August 26-30. Below I reproduce some of the prerequisite and reference material from the event’s web site. … Continue reading

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