Download or read book The Algebraic Characterization of Geometric 4-Manifolds written by J. A. Hillman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994-02-03 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes work on the characterization of closed 4-manifolds in terms of familiar invariants such as Euler characteristic, fundamental group, and Stiefel-Whitney classes. Using techniques from homological group theory, the theory of 3-manifolds and topological surgery, infrasolvmanifolds are characterized up to homeomorphism, and surface bundles are characterized up to simple homotopy equivalence. Non-orientable cases are also considered wherever possible, and in the final chapter the results obtained earlier are applied to 2-knots and complex analytic surfaces.