Math Science Literature Lecture Series

CMSA EVENTS

Speaker:

Ciprian Manolescu - Stanford University

Please register here to attend any of the lectures.

Title: Four-dimensional topology

Abstract: I will outline the history of four-dimensional topology. Some major events were the work of Donaldson and Freedman from 1982, and the introduction of the Seiberg-Witten equations in 1994. I will discuss these, and then move on to what has been done in the last 20 years, when the focus shifted to four-manifolds with boundary and cobordisms. Floer homology has led to numerous applications, and recently there have also been a few novel results (and proofs of old results) using Khovanov homology. The talk will be accessible to a general mathematical audience.

Written articles will accompany each lecture in this series and be available as part of the publication “History and Literature of Mathematical Science.”

The schedule will be updated as talks are confirmed.