Nonlinear superrigidity for topologists and groups acting on manifoldsmanifolds
by
Benson Farb
University of Chicago

In this talk I'll describe joint work with Peter Shalen. This work is part of an attempt to understand which infinite groups can act nontrivially on a given compact manifold M. Techniques from the classical theory of finite group actions generally fail. Even the case when M is the circle remains a challenge, and contains some surprising examples.

Date received: April 16, 1998

Copyright © 1998 by the author(s). The author(s) of this document and the organizers of the conference have granted their consent to include this abstract in Atlas Mathematical Conference Abstracts. Document # cabb-22.