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These lectures are fantastic, as is his book about Morse theory. Highly recommended. And freely available: https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/milnmors.
by jules 6y ago
These lectures are fantastic, as is his book about Morse theory. Highly recommended. And freely available: https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/milnmors.pdf https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/milnmors.pdf
- jeffreyrogers 6y agoAs I'm sure you know, Spivak[0] (whose lecture notes the book is based on) was one of Milnor's advisees at Princeton. I was told by another Princeton PhD who was there shortly after Spivak (may have overlapped, I'm not quite sure) that whenever Spivak had a problem he thought was interesting he would discuss it with Milnor, who invariably had already thought about it and knew the answer. This experience dissuaded Spivak from an academic career because he felt he could never be as good a mathematician as Milnor. At least that's the story I was told. [0]: Same Spivak who wrote the famous Calculus book and a series on differential geometry.