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The Classification of Legendrian Knots and Links

Lisa Traynor
Bryn Mawr College

Thursday, November 2, 2006
007 Kemeny Hall, 4 pm
Tea 3:30 pm, 223 Kemeny Hall

Abstract: A basic problem in topology is to construct a list of topological knots and links. This infinite list should contain every knot and link, and no object should appear more than once. There are beautiful tables of topological knots and links with small crossing numbers. I will discuss progress on developing such a table for "Legendrian" knots and links. These are topological knots and links that satisfy an additional geometric condition imposed by a contact structure.

This talk will be accessible to graduate students.