Math 732: Knot Theory

Syllabus and Class Notes

Syllabus for the course

I will post my lecture notes for the course (except for a few days). These notes are currently organized to loosely follow Cromwell's book.

1. Course notes, ch.1

2. Course notes, ch.2

3. Course notes, ch.3

Class Documents

History of Knot Tabulation, slides from class 2/2.

Potential Project Topics.

Links related to Class

1. Here's a readable account of the history of knot theory by one of the current leading researchers, Josef Przyticki.
   

2. Knot Atlas (encyclopedic website by Dror Bar-Natan)

3. We discussed the Alexander horned sphere in class. Link 1, Link 2.

4. Showing that the minimal crossing number for a torus knot T(p,q) is no less than p(q-1) takes effort. This paper does it: "On the Braid Index of Alternating Links", by Kunio Murasugi, Transactions of AMS, 1991. (To access JSTOR articles, Wake students need to either be on campus or establish a VPN.)