Cobordism and Spaces of Manifolds
Appears in collection : 1923-2023, Centenaire de René Thom
Thom's most celebrated work developed the notion of cobordism of manifolds, and translated the problem of classifying manifolds up to cobordism into a problem in homotopy theory: this translation is mediated by his Transversality Theorem. I will describe a different point of view on this topic, arising from the modern theory of cobordism categories.
