MATHEMATICS COLLOQUIUM
Speaker: Will Kazez.
Title: Tight Contact Structures and Taut Foliations.
Affiliation: University of Georgia.
Date: Friday, 7 February 2003.
Place and Time: Room 101 - Love Building, 3:35-4:30 pm.
Refreshments: Room 204 - Love Building, 3:00 pm.
Abstract.
A contact structure is a non-integrable selection of 2-planes in the
tangent bundle of a 3-manifold. That is, it is precisely the
opposite of a foliation. I'll discuss parallels in the development
of contact topology and foliation theory with an emphasis on existence
theorems. The techniques involve low-tech cut and paste topology, and
the talk will be accessible to graduate students.
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