Speaker
Prof.
Emmanuel Giroux
(CNRS et ENS)
Description
We will review the content and the influence of two papers by R. Thom. The first is his 1949 note "sur une partition en cellules associée à une fonction sur une variété" where he exhibits the cell decomposition provided by any gradient of a Morse function ; we will also discuss the two unpublished manuscripts dated 1957 where Thom applies Morse Theory to analyze the topology of complex affine algebraic/analytic manifolds. The second article is the 1959 paper "remarques sur les problèmes comportant des inéquations différentielles globales" where Thom scatters seeds for the general study of open differential relations, a theme that Gromov will later embrace in the vast theory of the h-principle.