Benedetta Andina: The unoriented cobordism ring

Abstract:

After providing the main ideas about what Stiefel-Whitney classes are, we will try to highlight how the unoriented cobordism ring can be studied using these, which are usually easily computable. To demonstrate this relationship (as presented by Pontrjagin and Thom), the we are going to unveil an explicit structure of this ring. This structure provides a clear classification of smooth closed manifolds.