This book is an introduction to surgery theory: the standard classification method for high-dimensional manifolds. It is aimed at graduate students, who have already had a basic topology course, and w
Noncommutative localization is a powerful algebraic technique for constructing new rings by inverting elements, matrices and more generally morphisms of modules. Originally conceived by algebraists (notably P. M. Cohn), it is now an important tool not only in pure algebra but also in the topology of non-simply-connected spaces, algebraic geometry and noncommutative geometry. This volume consists of 9 articles on noncommutative localization in algebra and topology by J. A. Beachy, P. M. Cohn, W. G. Dwyer, P. A. Linnell, A. Neeman, A. A. Ranicki, H. Reich, D. Sheiham and Z. Skoda. The articles include basic definitions, surveys, historical background and applications, as well as presenting new results. The book is an introduction to the subject, an account of the state of the art, and also provides many references for further material. It is suitable for graduate students and more advanced researchers in both algebra and topology.
This is the first unified treatment in book form of the lower K-groups of Bass and the lower L-groups of the author. These groups arise as the Grothendieck groups of modules and quadratic forms which are components of the K- and L-groups of polynomial extensions. They are important in the topology of non-compact manifolds such as Euclidean spaces, being the value groups for Whitehead torsion, the Siebemann end obstruction and the Wall finiteness and surgery obstructions. Some of the applications to topology are included, such as the obstruction theories for splitting homotopy equivalences and for fibering compact manifolds over the circle. Only elementary algebraic constructions are used, which are always motivated by topology. The material is accessible to a wide mathematical audience, especially graduate students and research workers in topology and algebra.
Written by leading experts in the field, this monograph provides homotopy theoretic foundations for surgery theory on higher-dimensional manifolds. Presenting classical ideas in a modern framework, t
