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The Algebraic Topology: A Beginner's Course

The Algebraic Topology: A Beginner's Course (UNSW). Taught by N. J. Wildberger, this course provides an introduction to algebraic topology, with emphasis on visualization, geometric intuition and simplified computations. Algebraic topology is one of the most dynamic and exciting areas of 20th century mathematics, with its roots in the work of Riemann, Klein and Poincare in the latter half of the 19th century. This course introduces a wide range of novel objects: the sphere, torus, projective plane, knots, Klein bottle, the circle, polytopes, curves in a way that disregards many of the unessential features, and only retains the essence of the shapes of spaces. And it also has some novel features, including Conway's ZIP proof of the classification of surfaces, a rational form of turn angles and curvature, an emphasis on the importance of the rational line as the model of the continuum, and a healthy desire to keep things simple and physical.

We begin by giving some examples of the main theorem from the last lecture: that the associated homomorphism of fundamental groups associated to a covering space p:X to B injects pi(X) as a subgroup of pi(B). We look at helical coverings of a circle, and also a two-fold covering of the wedge of two circles. The covering space associated to the identity subgroup is called the universal covering space of B. And we also discuss how other covering spaces may be created from a universal covering space.

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