The invariants of manifolds. (English) Zbl 0846.57016

Bott, Raoul

Bloom, Thomas (ed.) et al., Modern methods in complex analysis. The Princeton conference in honor of Robert C. Gunning and Joseph J. Kohn, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA, Mar. 16-20, 1992. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ann. Math. Stud. 137, 29-39 (1995).

In this inspiring paper the author takes the reader on a marvellous tour through invariants of manifolds starting with the Euler number, proceeding with Pontryagin numbers, index invariants from the Atiyah-Singer Index theorem and all the way to the new manifold invariants emerging from the work of Ed Witten.
For the entire collection see [Zbl 0852.00026].

Reviewer: V.L.Hansen (Lyngby)

MSC:

57R19	Algebraic topology on manifolds and differential topology
58J20	Index theory and related fixed-point theorems on manifolds

Keywords:

Atiyah-Singer index theorem; invariants; manifolds; Euler number; Pontryagin numbers; index