Author Archives: Jeremy Brazas

The fundamental group of the earring space

Here is one of my favorite spaces: The earring space, i.e. the “shrinking wedge of circles.” This space is the first step into the world of “wild” topological spaces. This post is meant to be an introduction into how one … Continue reading

Posted in Algebraic Topology, earring group, earring space, Fundamental group, Homotopy theory | Tagged , , , , , , | 21 Comments

The Cech Expansion: nerves of open covers

The Whitehead theorem in homotopy theory basically says that to fully understand the homotopy type of a CW-complex one only needs to know about the homotopy groups (really, the weak homotopy type). It is very easy to produce spaces to … Continue reading

Posted in Cech expansion, Shape theory, Simplicial complexes | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

A starting place

Homotopy in wild spaces If I’m thinking about wild topology, I’m probably thinking about topological spaces (geometric-type objects) which have points where non-trivial structure is visible no matter how far you zoom in. Though I’m not so interested in generating … Continue reading

Posted in earring space, Homotopy theory | Leave a comment