COMPACT, a tutorial Scott W. Williams State University of New York in Buffalo |
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I was invited to present a one hour tutorial on Topology for students attending the fifth annual Conference for African American Researchers in the Mathematical Sciences held June 22-26, 1999 at the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor. This is a world wide web version of my notes for the lecture and is presented in five parts.
When organizer Bill Massey heard the title of this lecture, he said jokingly, I hope you will not try to convince us that "the finite subcover" business is "natural." Well, I do not believe it is natural nor do I believe it is intuitive; on the other hand, I believe Topology was invented, in part, to focus upon a few ideas, one of which is compactness. In this tutorial, I will switch between the intuitive and the accurate, between historical motivations and modern interest.
Scott W. Williams
9/1/99