Abstract
Sixty years ago Hirzebruch observed how the vanishing of the Stiefel–Whitney class w 2 led to integrality of the \(\hat{A}\)-genus of an algebraic variety [Hirz1]. This was one motivation for the Atiyah–Singer index theorem but also for my own thesis about Dirac operators and Kähler manifolds. Indeed the interaction between topology and algebraic geometry which he developed has been a constant theme in virtually all my work.
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Dedicated to the Memory of Friedrich Hirzebruch
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Hitchin, N. (2016). Higgs Bundles and Characteristic Classes. In: Ballmann, W., Blohmann, C., Faltings, G., Teichner, P., Zagier, D. (eds) Arbeitstagung Bonn 2013. Progress in Mathematics, vol 319. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43648-7_8
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