Atiyah, Michael Topology and differential equations. (English) Zbl 0687.35001 Industrial and applied mathematics, Proc. 1st Int. Conf., ICIAM, Paris/Fr. 1987, 45-52 (1988). [For the entire collection see Zbl 0664.00003.] The author presents his view on the general relation between pure and applied mathematics. In order to illustrate this idea, he speaks on the application of topology to some classical linear and nonlinear partial differential equations. He ends the paper with the following advice for any applied mathematician: “don’t try to read the books (they are usually unreadable); find a friendly topologist!”. It’s a point of view. Reviewer: G.Morosanu Cited in 2 Documents MSC: 35-02 Research exposition (monographs, survey articles) pertaining to partial differential equations 00A35 Methodology of mathematics 35G15 Boundary value problems for linear higher-order PDEs 35G30 Boundary value problems for nonlinear higher-order PDEs 35Q99 Partial differential equations of mathematical physics and other areas of application 55Mxx Classical topics in algebraic topology Keywords:topology PDF BibTeX XML