[Binghamton Geometry/Topology Seminar] October 30, 3:20 pm

[Marco Varisco]

*Please notice unusual time!*

BINGHAMTON GEOMETRY/TOPOLOGY SEMINAR
  http://www.math.binghamton.edu/dept/topsem/

Date:  Thursday, October 30, 2008

Time:  3:20 pm

Place:  Library North 2205
  (followed by coffee/tea in the Anderson Reading Room)

Speaker:  Bernard Badzioch (University at Buffalo, SUNY)

Title:  Rigidification of homotopy structures

Abstract:  Algebraic objects in general do not have good homotopy
properties: a space homotopy equivalent to e.g. a topological group
usually will have no group structure itself. On the other hand,
several classes of objects  naturally occurring in algebraic topology
(loop spaces, Eilenberg-MacLane spaces, spectra) exhibit properties
closely resembling these known from algebra. These two facts inspired
an intensive study which showed that in special cases algebraic
structures can be described in homotopy meaningful terms. This
research led to the development of operads, PROPS, Gamma spaces, etc.
The talk will present an overview of these results. It will also
explain how they all admit a common generalization. As it turns out,
there is a very broad class of algebraic objects which have their
interesting homotopy theoretical analogs.