Celebratio Mathematica — Freedman

Michael Hartley Freedman

Works connected to Richard James Milgram

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incollection M. Freedman and R. Kirby: “A geometric proof of Rochlin’s theorem,” pp. 85–97 in Algebraic and geometric topology (Stanford University, CA, August 2–21, 1976), part 2. Edited by R. J. Milgram. Proceedings of Symposia in Pure Mathematics XXXII. American Mathematical Society (Providence, RI), 1978. MR 0520525 Zbl 0392.57018

In 1974 Andrew Casson outlined to us a proof of Rochlin’s Theorem on the index of a smooth, closed 4-manifold \( M^4 \). His proof involved the Arf invariant of a certain quadratic form defined on the first homology group of a surface in \( M^4 \) which is dual to the second Stiefel–Whitney class of \( M^4 \). Our proof was derived from Casson’s; it is the same in principle but differs considerably in detail. After this manuscript was written, we discovered that Rochlin had already in 1971 given a short sketch of this proof; it appears in a paper [Rochlin 1972] about real algebraic curves in \( \mathbb{R}P^2 \).

In addition we obtain a “stable” converse to the Kervaire–Milnor nonimbedding theorem [Kervaire and Milnor 1961], and in Section 2, by relaxing some orientability assumptions, we prove a new (but unspectacular) nonimbedding theorem and find an obstruction to approximating unoriented simplicial 3-chains in a 5-manifold by an immersed 3-manifold.

Richard James Milgram	Related
Robion C. Kirby	Related	Volume