A perspective projection of a dodecahedral tessellation in H3. Four dodecahedra meet at each edge, and eight meet at each vertex, like the cubes of a cubic tessellation in E3.

Title: Construction of 3-Manifolds

Speaker: Ananya Satoskar

Abstract: In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. Thankfully for us, a beautiful theorem of Lickorish and Wallace states that any closed, orientable 3-manifold can be obtained via integral surgery on a link in the 3-sphere. This talk will be an adventure into the universe of 3-manifolds, beginning with the basic notions of handlebodies, Heegaard decompositions and Dehn surgery, and culminating in a proof of the Lickorish-Wallace theorem. If time permits, comments will be made on dimension 4. There will be lots of pictures and explicit examples.

Some snacks will be provided before and after the talk.

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