The theory of surgery on manifolds has been generalized to categories of manifolds with group actions in several different ways. This book discusses some basic properties that such theories have in common. Special emphasis is placed on analogs of the fourfold periodicity theorems in ordinary surgery and the roles of standard general position hypotheses on the strata of manifolds with group actions. The contents of the book presuppose some familiarity with the basic ideas of surgery theory and transformation groups, but no previous knowledge of equivariant surgery is assumed. The book is designed to serve either as an introduction to equivariant surgery theory for advanced graduate students and researchers in related areas, or as an account of the authors' previously unpublished work on periodicity for specialists in surgery theory or transformation groups.

Surgery theory, the basis for the classification theory of manifolds, is now about forty years old. The sixtieth birthday (on December 14, 1996) of C.T.C. Wall, a leading member of the subject's founding generation, led the editors of this volume to reflect on the extraordinary accomplishments of surgery theory as well as its current enormously varied interactions with algebra, analysis, and geometry. Workers in many of these areas have often lamented the lack of a single source surveying surgery theory and its applications. Because no one person could write such a survey, the editors asked a variety of experts to report on the areas of current interest. This is the second of two volumes resulting from that collective effort. It will be useful to topologists, to other interested researchers, and to advanced students. The topics covered include current applications of surgery, Wall's finiteness obstruction, algebraic surgery, automorphisms and embeddings of manifolds, surgery theoretic methods for the study of group actions and stratified spaces, metrics of positive scalar curvature, and surgery in dimension four. In addition to the editors, the contributors are S. Ferry, M. Weiss, B. Williams, T. Goodwillie, J. Klein, S. Weinberger, B. Hughes, S. Stolz, R. Kirby, L. Taylor, and F. Quinn.

This book contains the proceedings of the Real Algebraic Geometry-Topology Conference, held at Michigan State University in December 1993. Presented here are recent results and discussions of new ideas pertaining to such topics as resolution theorems, algebraic structures, topology of nonsingular real algebraic sets, and the distribution of real algebraic sets in projective space.

An advanced treatment of surgery theory for graduate students and researchers Surgery theory, a subfield of geometric topology, is the study of the classifications of manifolds. A Course on Surgery Theory offers a modern look at this important mathematical discipline and some of its applications. In this book, Stanley Chang and Shmuel Weinberger explain some of the triumphs of surgery theory during the past three decades, from both an algebraic and geometric point of view. They also provide an extensive treatment of basic ideas, main theorems, active applications, and recent literature. The authors methodically cover all aspects of surgery theory, connecting it to other relevant areas of mathematics, including geometry, homotopy theory, analysis, and algebra. Later chapters are self-contained, so readers can study them directly based on topic interest. Of significant use to high-dimensional topologists and researchers in noncommutative geometry and algebraic K-theory, A Course on Surgery Theory serves as an important resource for the mathematics community.

Obstruction theoretic methods are introduced into isovariant homotopy theory for a class of spaces with group actions; the latter includes all smooth actions of cyclic groups of prime power order. The central technical result is an equivalence between isovariant homotopy and specific equivariant homotopy theories for diagrams under suitable conditions. This leads to isovariant Whitehead theorems, an obstruction-theoretic approach to isovariant homotopy theory with obstructions in cohomology groups of ordinary and equivalent diagrams, and qualitative computations for rational homotopy groups of certain spaces of isovariant self maps of linear spheres. The computations show that these homotopy groups are often far more complicated than the rational homotopy groups for the corresponding spaces of equivariant self maps. Subsequent work will use these computations to construct new families of smooth actions on spheres that are topologically linear but differentiably nonlinear.

This is Part 1 of a two-part volume reflecting the proceedings of the 1993 Georgia International Topology Conference held at the University of Georgia during the month of August. The texts include research and expository articles and problem sets. The conference covered a wide variety of topics in geometric topology. Features: Kirby's problem list, which contains a thorough description of the progress made on each of the problems and includes a very complete bibliography, makes the work useful for specialists and non-specialists who want to learn about the progress made in many areas of topology. This list may serve as a reference work for decades to come. Gabai's problem list, which focuses on foliations and laminations of 3-manifolds, collects for the first time in one paper definitions, results, and problems that may serve as a defining source in the subject area.

The publication of this book in 1970 marked the culmination of a period in the history of the topology of manifolds. This edition, based on the original text, is supplemented by notes on subsequent developments and updated references and commentaries.

This collection brings together influential papers by mathematicians exploring the research frontiers of topology, one of the most important developments of modern mathematics. The papers cover a wide range of topological specialties, including tools for the analysis of group actions on manifolds, calculations of algebraic K-theory, a result on analytic structures on Lie group actions, a presentation of the significance of Dirac operators in smoothing theory, a discussion of the stable topology of 4-manifolds, an answer to the famous question about symmetries of simply connected manifolds, and a fresh perspective on the topological classification of linear transformations. The contributors include A. Adem, A. H. Assadi, M. Bökstedt, S. E. Cappell, R. Charney, M. W. Davis, P. J. Eccles, M. H. Freedman, I. Hambleton, J. C. Hausmann, S. Illman, G. Katz, M. Kreck, W. Lück, I. Madsen, R. J. Milgram, J. Morava, E. K. Pedersen, V. Puppe, F. Quinn, A. Ranicki, J. L. Shaneson, D. Sullivan, P. Teichner, Z. Wang, and S. Weinberger.

This book provides an overview of some of the most active topics in the theory of transformation groups over the past decades and stresses advances obtained in the last dozen years. The emphasis is on actions of Lie groups on manifolds and CW complexes. Manifolds and actions of Lie groups on them are studied in the linear, semialgebraic, definable, analytic, smooth, and topological categories. Equivalent vector bundles play an important role. The work is divided into fifteen articles and will be of interest to anyone researching or studying transformations groups. The references make it easy to find details and original accounts of the topics surveyed, including tools and theories used in these accounts.