The Pontryagin theorem, i.e. the unstable and framed version of the Pontrjagin-Thom construction, identifying cobordism classes of normally framed submanifolds with their Cohomotopy charge in unstable Borsuk-Spanier Cohomotopy sets, is due to:
Lev Pontrjagin, Classification of continuous maps of a complex into a sphere, Communication I, Doklady Akademii Nauk SSSR 19 3 (1938) 147-149
Lev Pontryagin, Homotopy classification of mappings of an (n+2)-dimensional sphere on an n-dimensional one, Doklady Akad. Nauk SSSR (N.S.) 19 (1950), 957–959 (pdf)
(both available in English translation in Gamkrelidze 86),
as presented more comprehensively in:
The Pontrjagin theorem must have been known to Pontrjagin at least by 1936, when he announced the computation of the second stem of homotopy groups of spheres:
Review:
Daniel Freed, Karen Uhlenbeck, Appendix B of: Instantons and Four-Manifolds, Mathematical Sciences Research Institute Publications, Springer 1991 (doi:10.1007/978-1-4613-9703-8)
Glen Bredon, chapter II.16 of: Topology and Geometry, Graduate Texts in Mathematics 139, Springer (1993) [doi:10.1007/978-1-4757-6848-0, pdf]
Antoni Kosinski, chapter IX of: Differential manifolds, Academic Press (1993) [pdf, ISBN:978-0-12-421850-5]
John Milnor, Chapter 7 of: Topology from the differentiable viewpoint, Princeton University Press, 1997. (ISBN:9780691048338, pdf)
Mladen Bestvina (notes by Adam Keenan), Chapter 16 in: Differentiable Topology and Geometry, 2002 (pdf)
Michel Kervaire, La méthode de Pontryagin pour la classification des applications sur une sphère, in: E. Vesentini (ed.), Topologia Differenziale, CIME Summer Schools, vol. 26, Springer 2011 (doi:10.1007/978-3-642-10988-1_3)
Rustam Sadykov, Section 1 of: Elements of Surgery Theory, 2013 (pdf, pdf)
András Csépai, Stable Pontryagin-Thom construction for proper maps, Period Math Hung 80, 259–268 (2020) (arXiv:1905.07734, doi:10.1007/s10998-020-00327-0)
Discussion of the early history:
The (fairly straightforward) generalization of the Pontrjagin theorem to the twisted Pontrjagin theorem, identifying twisted Cohomotopy with cobordism classes of normally twisted-framed submanifolds, is made explicit in:
A general equivariant Pontrjagin theorem – relating equivariant Cohomotopy to normal equivariant framed submanifolds – remains elusive, but on free G-manifolds it is again straightforward (and reduces to the twisted Pontrjagin theorem on the quotient space), made explicit in:
In negative codimension, the Cohomotopy charge map from the Pontrjagin theorem gives the May-Segal theorem, now identifying Cohomotopy cocycle spaces with configuration spaces of points:
Peter May, The geometry of iterated loop spaces, Springer 1972 (pdf)
Graeme Segal, Configuration-spaces and iterated loop-spaces, Invent. Math. 21 (1973), 213–221. MR 0331377 (pdf)
c Generalization of these constructions and results is due to
Dusa McDuff, Configuration spaces of positive and negative particles, Topology Volume 14, Issue 1, March 1975, Pages 91-107 (doi:10.1016/0040-9383(75)90038-5)
Carl-Friedrich Bödigheimer, Stable splittings of mapping spaces, Algebraic topology. Springer 1987. 174-187 (pdf, pdf)
Thom's theorem i.e. the unstable and oriented version of the Pontrjagin-Thom construction, identifying cobordism classes of normally oriented submanifolds with homotopy classes of maps to the universal special orthogonal Thom space , is due to:
Textbook accounts:
The joint generalization of Pontryagin 38a, 55 (framing structure) and Thom 54 (orientation structure) to any family of tangential structures (“(B,f)-structure”) is first made explicit in
and the general statement that has come to be known as the Pontryagin-Thom isomorphism (identifying the stable cobordism classes of normally (B,f)-structured submanifolds with homotopy classes of maps to the Thom spectrum Mf) is really due to Lashof 63, Theorem C.
Textbook accounts:
Theodor Bröcker, Tammo tom Dieck, Satz 3.1 & 4.9 in: Kobordismentheorie, Lecture Notes in Mathematics 178, Springer (1970) [ISBN:9783540053415]
Stanley Kochman, section 1.5 of: Bordism, Stable Homotopy and Adams Spectral Sequences, AMS 1996
Yuli Rudyak, On Thom spectra, orientability and cobordism, Springer Monographs in Mathematics (1998) [doi:10.1007/978-3-540-77751-9, pdf]
Lecture notes:
John Francis, Topology of manifolds course notes (2010) (web), Lecture 3: Thom’s theorem (pdf), Lecture 4 Transversality (notes by I. Bobkova) (pdf)
Cary Malkiewich, Section 3 of: Unoriented cobordism and , 2011 (pdf)
Tom Weston, Part I of An introduction to cobordism theory (pdf)
See also:
Last revised on September 1, 2024 at 13:30:50. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.