Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"John Milnor, Winner of the 2011 Abel Prize from the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters"
"John Willard Milnor, Winner of the 2011 Leroy P. Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement, American Mathematical Society"
Table of Contents*Frontmatter, pg. i*Preface, pg. v*Contents, pg. vii* 1. Smooth Manifolds, pg. 1* 2. Vector Bundles, pg. 13* 3. Constructing New Vector Bundles Out of Old, pg. 25* 4. Stiefel-Whitney Classes, pg. 37* 5. Grassmann Manifolds and Universal Bundles, pg. 55* 6. A Cell Structure for Grassmann Manifolds, pg. 73* 7. The Cohomology Ring H*(Gn; Z/2), pg. 83* 8. Existence of Stiefel-Whitney Classes, pg. 89* 9. Oriented Bundles and the Euler Class, pg. 95* 10. The Thom Isomorphism Theorem, pg. 105* 11. Computations in a Smooth Manifold, pg. 115* 12. Obstructions, pg. 139* 13. Complex Vector Bundles and Complex Manifolds, pg. 149* 14. Chern Classes, pg. 155* 15. Pontrjagin Classes, pg. 173* 16. Chern Numbers and Pontrjagin Numbers, pg. 183* 17. The Oriented Cobordism Ring OMEGA*, pg. 199* 18. Thom Spaces and Transversality, pg. 205* 19. Multiplicative Sequences and the Signature Theorem, pg. 219* 20. Combinatorial Pontrjagin Classes, pg. 231*Epilogue, pg. 249*Appendix A: Singular Homology and Cohomology, pg. 257*Appendix B: Bernoulli Numbers, pg. 281*Appendix C: Connections, Curvature, and Characteristic Classes, pg. 289*Bibliography, pg. 315*Index, pg. 325