Lectures in Topology

Abstract

THERE is an amazing difference of opinion concerning the importance of topology. Some claim that it is a new type of mathematical thinking, which goes to the heart of qualitative spacial relations, makes complicated analysis intuitively simple, throws light on differential and functional equations, opens a new era in dynamics, and is applicable to problems of electric circuits and of the constitution of chemical compounds. Yet others regard it as a highly specialized subject which can be safely ignored even by geometers, and point out that topologists have not yet solved the apparently elementary four-colour map problem which has been discussed for more than a century.

Lectures in Topology

The University of Michigan Conference of 1940. Edited by Raymond L. Wilder William L. Ayres. Pp. vii + 316. (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1941.) 3 dollars.