18.904 Lecture schedule

The lectures fall into the following main parts. We will follow roughly the script laid out in Mark Behrens' OCW course. His guidelines for lecturers are also very useful to keep in mind. I will provide details here when modifications to the script become necessary.

0. Organizational meeting (Feb. 6)

I. The classification of surfaces (6 lectures)

II. The fundamental group (6 lectures)

III. The Seifert-Van Kampen theorem and applications (10 lectures)

IV. Covering spaces (10 lectures)

V. Graphs and trees (4 lectures)

VI. Homology, higher homotopy groups, and CW complexes (TBA)