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Geometry-Topology Reading Seminar

Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - 10:30am

Wolfgang Ziller

University of Pennsylvania

Location

University of Pennsylvania

DRL 4C8

The classical sphere theorem states that any compact simply connected manifold with sectional curvature between 1 and 4 is homeomorphic to a sphere. Brendle and Schoen recently solved the long standing open conjecture that it is actually diffeomorphic to a sphere. I will discuss this result and various related sphere theorem. The method uses the Ricci flow and is based on recent work by Boehm and Wilking.