Beno Eckmann - Böcker

In my long professional life as a mathematician I have had to deliver various survey lectures. They were of different character according to the occasion. A selected number are reproduced in this volume. They were, with few exceptions, printed in books or in periodicals, and are reproduced here without any modification. I started as a student at the ETH Zurich in 1935 and have spent my working Ufe there, with the exception of the period 1942-1948 (lecturer then associate professor at the University of Lausanne) and 1947 and 1951/52 (Institute for Advanced Study Princeton). In 1948 I was appointed as a professor at the ETH; I retired in 1984 and have since then been professor emeritus. The surveys in this volume are lectures given at congresses and workshops, at international congresses of mathematicians (plenary or section lectures), and at special occasions like birthdays or commemorations. They all reflect the special interests of the respective times. Although they are in fields of topology, algebra and differential geometry they reveal the big changes mathematics has undergone over the years from 1943 to 2004. New thinking has been developed; it has created new problems, or simply has let old problems appear in a new light.

In my long professional life as a mathematician I have had to deliver various survey lectures. They were of different character according to the occasion. A selected number are reproduced in this volume. They were, with few exceptions, printed in books or in periodicals, and are reproduced here without any modification. I started as a student at the ETH Zurich in 1935 and have spent my working Ufe there, with the exception of the period 1942-1948 (lecturer then associate professor at the University of Lausanne) and 1947 and 1951/52 (Institute for Advanced Study Princeton). In 1948 I was appointed as a professor at the ETH; I retired in 1984 and have since then been professor emeritus. The surveys in this volume are lectures given at congresses and workshops, at international congresses of mathematicians (plenary or section lectures), and at special occasions like birthdays or commemorations. They all reflect the special interests of the respective times. Although they are in fields of topology, algebra and differential geometry they reveal the big changes mathematics has undergone over the years from 1943 to 2004. New thinking has been developed; it has created new problems, or simply has let old problems appear in a new light.

This volume contains research papers and survey articles written by Beno Eckmann from 1941 to 1986. The aim of the compilation is to provide a general view of the breadth of Eckmann’s mathematical work. His influence was particularly strong in the development of many subfields of topology and algebra, where he repeatedly pointed out close, and often surprising, connections between them and other areas. The surveys are exemplary in terms of how they make difficult mathematical ideas easily comprehensible and accessible even to non-specialists. The topics treated here can be classified into the following, not entirely unrelated areas: algebraic topology (homotopy and homology theory), algebra, group theory and differential geometry. Beno Eckmann was Professor of Mathematics at the University of Lausanne, 1942-48, and Principal of the Institute for Mathematical Research at the ETH Zurich, 1964-84, where he was therefore an emeritus professor.