Seminar series
Date
Wed, 14 Oct 2020
10:00
10:00
Location
Virtual
Speaker
Mehdi Yazdi
Organisation
University of Oxford
I will explain what it means for a manifold to have an affine structure and give an introduction to Benzecri's theorem stating that a closed surface admits an affine structure if and only if its Euler characteristic vanishes. I will also talk about an algebraic-topological generalization, due to Milnor and Wood, that bounds the Euler class of a flat circle bundle. No prior familiarity with the concepts is necessary.