On Knots

"On Knots is chatty, and very pleasant for browsing. There are lots of wonderful illustrations and a wealth of detail from the author's bag of tricks, gathered over the years, relating to the combinatorics of knot diagrams and also to Seifert pairings, cobordism, signature invariants (several different ones), the Arf invariant, and the ubiquitous Alexander polynomial. There are many challenges to the reader to explore combinatorial patterns, which makes the book stimulating."--American Mathematical Society

• *Frontmatter, pg. i*CONTENTS, pg. vii*PREFACE, pg. ix*I. INTRODUCTION, pg. 1*II. LINKING NUMBERS AND REIDEMEISTER MOVES, pg. 9*III. THE CONWAY POLYNOMIAL, pg. 19*IV. EXAMPLE S AND SKEIN THEORY, pg. 42*V. DETECTING SLICES AND RIBBONS- A FIRST PASS, pg. 70*VI. MISCELLANY, pg. 92*VII. SPANNING SURFACES AND THE SEIFERT PAIRING, pg. 181*VIII. RIBBONS AND SLICES, pg. 208*IX. THE ALEXANDER POLYNOMIAL AND BRANCHED COVERINGS, pg. 229*X. THE ALEXANDER POLYNOMIAL AND THE ARF INVARIANT, pg. 252*XI. FREE DIFFERENTIAL CALCULUS, pg. 262*XII. CYCLIC BRANCHED COVERINGS, pg. 271*XIII. SIGNATURE THEOREMS, pg. 299*XIV. G-SIGNATURE THEOREM FOR FOUR MANIFOLDS, pg. 327*XV. SIGNATURE OF CYCLIC BRANCHED COVERINGS, pg. 332*XVI. AN INVARIANT FOR COVERINGS, pg. 337*XVII. SLICE KNOTS, pg. 345*XVIII. CALCULATING sigmar FOR GENERALIZED STEVEDORE'S KNOT, pg. 355*XIX. SINGULARITIES, KNOTS AND BRIESKORN VARIETIES, pg. 366*APPENDIX. GENERALIZED POLYNOMIALS AND A STATE MODEL FOR THE JONES POLYNOMIAL, pg. 417*KNOT TABLES AND THE L-POLYNOMIAL, pg. 444*REFERENCES, pg. 474