These volumes are the outgrowth of a conference held at the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach (Germany) on the subject of 'Novikov Conjectures, Index Theorems and Rigidity'.

These volumes are the outgrowth of a conference held at the Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach (Germany) on the subject of `Novikov conjectures, index theorems and rigidity'.

These lecture notes contain a guided tour to the Novikov Conjecture and related conjectures due to Baum-Connes, Borel and Farrell-Jones. They begin with basics about higher signatures, Whitehead torsion and the s-Cobordism Theorem. Then an introduction to surgery theory and a version of the assembly map is presented. Using the solution of the Novikov conjecture for special groups some applications to the classification of low dimensional manifolds are given.

In algebraic topology some classical invariants - such as Betti numbers and Reidemeister torsion - are defined for compact spaces and finite group actions. They can be generalized using von Neumann algebras and their traces, and applied also to non-compact spaces and infinite groups. These new L2-invariants contain very interesting and novel information and can be applied to problems arising in topology, K-Theory, differential geometry, non-commutative geometry and spectral theory. The book, written in an accessible manner, presents a comprehensive introduction to this area of research, as well as its most recent results and developments.

The study of group actions is more than 100 years old but remains a widely studied topic in a variety of mathematic fields. A central development in the last 50 years is the phenomenon of rigidity, whereby one can classify actions of certain groups. This book looks at rigidity.

The first expository book-length introduction to intersection homology from the viewpoint of singular and piecewise linear chains.

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.

A systematic exposition of the theory and practice of ends of manifolds and CW complexes, not previously available.

Surgery theory, the basis for the classification theory of manifolds, is now about forty years old. There have been some extraordinary accomplishments in that time, which have led to enormously varied interactions with algebra, analysis, and geometry. Workers in many of these areas have often lamented the lack of a single source that surveys surgery theory and its applications. Indeed, no one person could write such a survey. The sixtieth birthday of C. T. C. Wall, one of the leaders of the founding generation of surgery theory, provided an opportunity to rectify the situation and produce a comprehensive book on the subject. Experts have written state-of-the-art reports that will be of broad interest to all those interested in topology, not only graduate students and mathematicians, but mathematical physicists as well. Contributors include J. Milnor, S. Novikov, W. Browder, T. Lance, E. Brown, M. Kreck, J. Klein, M. Davis, J. Davis, I. Hambleton, L. Taylor, C. Stark, E. Pedersen, W. Mio, J. Levine, K. Orr, J. Roe, J. Milgram, and C. Thomas.

This authoritative volume in honor of Alain Connes, the foremost architect of Noncommutative Geometry, presents the state-of-the art in the subject. The book features an amalgam of invited survey and research papers that will no doubt be accessed, read, and referred to, for several decades to come. The pertinence and potency of new concepts and methods are concretely illustrated in each contribution. Much of the content is a direct outgrowth of the Noncommutative Geometry conference, held March 23–April 7, 2017, in Shanghai, China. The conference covered the latest research and future areas of potential exploration surrounding topology and physics, number theory, as well as index theory and its ramifications in geometry.