Katsuro Sakai – författare

This book is designed for graduate students to acquire knowledge of dimension theory, ANR theory (theory of retracts), and related topics. These two theories are connected with various fields in geometric topology and in general topology as well. Hence, for students who wish to research subjects in general and geometric topology, understanding these theories will be valuable. Many proofs are illustrated by figures or diagrams, making it easier to understand the ideas of those proofs. Although exercises as such are not included, some results are given with only a sketch of their proofs. Completing the proofs in detail provides good exercise and training for graduate students and will be useful in graduate classes or seminars.

Researchers should also find this book very helpful, because it contains many subjects that are not presented in usual textbooks, e.g., dim X × I = dim X + 1 for a metrizable space X; the difference between the small and large inductive dimensions; a hereditarily infinite-dimensional space; the ANR-ness of locally contractible countable-dimensional metrizable spaces; an infinite-dimensional space with finite cohomological dimension; a dimension raising cell-like map; and a non-AR metric linear space. The final chapter enables students to understand how deeply related the two theories are.

Simplicial complexes are very useful in topology andare indispensable for studying the theories of both dimension and ANRs. There are many textbooks from which some knowledge of these subjects can be obtained, but no textbook discusses non-locally finite simplicial complexes in detail. So, when we encounter them, we have to refer to the original papers. For instance, J.H.C. Whitehead''s theorem on small subdivisions is very important, but its proof cannot be found in any textbook. The homotopy type of simplicial complexes is discussed in textbooks on algebraic topology using CW complexes, but geometrical arguments using simplicial complexes are rather easy.

An infinite-dimensional manifold is a topological manifold modeled on some infinite-dimensional homogeneous space called a model space. In this book, the following spaces are considered model spaces: Hilbert space (or non-separable Hilbert spaces), the Hilbert cube, dense subspaces of Hilbert spaces being universal spaces for absolute Borel spaces, the direct limit of Euclidean spaces, and the direct limit of Hilbert cubes (which is homeomorphic to the dual of a separable infinite-dimensional Banach space with bounded weak-star topology).

This book is designed for graduate students to acquire knowledge of fundamental results on infinite-dimensional manifolds and their characterizations. To read and understand this book, some background is required even for senior graduate students in topology, but that background knowledge is minimized and is listed in the first chapter so that references can easily be found. Almost all necessary background information is found in Geometric Aspects of General Topology, the author''s first book.

Many kinds of hyperspaces and function spaces are investigated in various branches of mathematics, which are mostly infinite-dimensional. Among them, many examples of infinite-dimensional manifolds have been found. For researchers studying such objects, this book will be very helpful. As outstanding applications of Hilbert cube manifolds, the book contains proofs of the topological invariance of Whitehead torsion and Borsuk’s conjecture on the homotopy type of compact ANRs. This is also the first book that presents combinatorial ∞-manifolds, the infinite-dimensional version of combinatorial n-manifolds, and proofs of two remarkable results, that is, any triangulation of each manifold modeled on the direct limit of Euclidean spaces is a combinatorial ∞-manifold and the Hauptvermutung for them is true.