Overview

In my long professional life as a mathematician I have had to deliver various survey lectures. They were of different character according to the occasion. A selected number are reproduced in this volume. They were, with few exceptions, printed in books or in periodicals, and are reproduced here without any modification. I started as a student at the ETH Zurich in 1935 and have spent my working Ufe there, with the exception of the period 1942-1948 (lecturer then associate professor at the University of Lausanne) and 1947 and 1951/52 (Institute for Advanced Study Princeton). In 1948 I was appointed as a professor at the ETH; I retired in 1984 and have since then been professor emeritus. The surveys in this volume are lectures given at congresses and workshops, at international congresses of mathematicians (plenary or section lectures), and at special occasions like birthdays or commemorations. They all reflect the special interests of the respective times. Although they are in fields of topology, algebra and differential geometry they reveal the big changes mathematics has undergone over the years from 1943 to 2004. New thinking has been developed; it has created new problems, or simply has let old problems appear in a new light.

Full Product Details

Author:   Beno Eckmann
Publisher:   Springer-Verlag Berlin and Heidelberg GmbH & Co. KG
Imprint:   Springer-Verlag Berlin and Heidelberg GmbH & Co. K
Edition:   Softcover reprint of hardcover 1st ed. 2006
Dimensions:   Width: 15.50cm , Height: 1.40cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.454kg
ISBN:  

9783642070341

ISBN 10:   3642070345
Pages:   266
Publication Date:   14 October 2010
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

L’idée de dimension.- Topologie und Algebra.- Complex-analytic manifolds.- Homotopie et dualité.- Groupes d’homotopie et dualité.- Homotopy and cohomology theory.- Simple homotopy type and categories of fractions.- Some recent developments in the homology theory of groups.- Poincaré duality groups of dimension two are surface groups.- Continuous solutions of linear equations — An old problem, its history, and its solution.- Mathematics: Questions and Answers.- Hurwitz-Radon matrices revisited: From effective solution of the Hurwitz matrix equations to Bott periodicity.- Birth of fibre spaces, and homotopy.- 4-Manifolds, group invariants, and ? 2-Betti numbers.- The Euler characteristic — a few highlights in its long history.- Topology, algebra, analysis — relations and missing links.- to ?2-methods in topology: Reduced ?2-homology, harmonic chains, ?2-Betti numbers.- Die Zukunft der Mathematik Ein Rückblick auf Hilberts programmatischen Vortrag vor 100 Jahren.- Kolmogorov and contemporary mathematics.- Is algebraic topology a respectable field?.- Social choice and topology. A case of pure and applied mathematics.

Reviews

From the reviews: The book under review is a collection of twenty-one survey or expository lectures given by its distinguished author during the period 1943 and 2004 ... . All are (broadly) in the fields of topology, algebra and differential geometry. ... Students will learn an important and substantial swathe of 20th century geometrical mathematics by carefully reading this delightful book. (Ross Geoghegan, Mathematical Reviews, Issue 2008 c) The papers are arranged chronologically, and cover more than 60 years of work. ... The collection is rounded out by a couple essays on the place of mathematics in culture and its future. ... I heartily recommend adding it to your library. (John McCleary, MAA Online, February, 2009)

From the reviews: The book under review is a collection of twenty-one survey or expository lectures given by its distinguished author during the period 1943 and 2004 ! . All are (broadly) in the fields of topology, algebra and differential geometry. ! Students will learn an important and substantial swathe of 20th century geometrical mathematics by carefully reading this delightful book. (Ross Geoghegan, Mathematical Reviews, Issue 2008 c) The papers are arranged chronologically, and cover more than 60 years of work. ! The collection is rounded out by a couple essays on the place of mathematics in culture and its future. ! I heartily recommend adding it to your library. (John McCleary, MAA Online, February, 2009)

From the reviews: The book under review is a collection of twenty-one survey or expository lectures given by its distinguished author during the period 1943 and 2004 ... . All are (broadly) in the fields of topology, algebra and differential geometry. ... Students will learn an important and substantial swathe of 20th century geometrical mathematics by carefully reading this delightful book. (Ross Geoghegan, Mathematical Reviews, Issue 2008 c) The papers are arranged chronologically, and cover more than 60 years of work. ... The collection is rounded out by a couple essays on the place of mathematics in culture and its future. ... I heartily recommend adding it to your library. (John McCleary, MAA Online, February, 2009)

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