LSGNT-Topics-in-Geometry

Topics in Geometry

Welcome to the LSGNT Topics in Geometry course for 2026/27.

Course structure

This is not a normal lecture course. Every week you'll have a different lecturer, covering some essential aspect of geometry. Lectures don't build on each other directly but later ones might end up using stuff from earlier ones.

The lecturers will set you problems and exercises, of wildly varying difficulty. These are for you to do because doing exercises is how you learn maths. Do as many of the exercises as you can.

A week after each lecture you'll have a `wrap-up session' where you discuss the exercises and the lecture as a group. There won't be a lecturer at the wrap-up session, instead one of you will act as the `owner' for that week's topic and lead the session. I'll also send along the 2nd year who owned the topic last year for extra guidance.

There are some notes of talks on the websites for last year's course, the 2024-25 courseand the 2023-24 course (which was run by Yankı Lekili). Also see the 2019 course for words of wisdom from Richard Thomas.

Location

Lectures and Wrap-Ups are in Room 658, Huxley building, Imperial College.

Schedule

Lectures are on Fridays 3pm-5pm, wrap-up sessions are on the following Friday, 11am-1pm.

Term 1

Date Topic Lecturer Owner 2nd year
2/10/26Spec and Proj (Starts at 2:40 PM!)
 
Old slides | Exercises
Ed Segal Daniel Lang Haoming Yang
9/10/26Poincaré duality
 
Notes | Exercises
Steven Sivek Michael McGloinKyaw Shin Thant
16/10/26Complex geometry
 
Old notes with exercises
Aleksander Doan Joe Cooper Anna Besciani
23/10/26Vector bundles and Chern classes
 
Notes with exercises
Selim Ghazouani Giacomo Passarella Julian Huber
30/10/26Blowing up
 
Exercises
Calum Spicer Sam Silver Adam Baranski
6/11/26Symplectic geometry
 
Notes with exercises
Yanki Lekili Abhi Mummaneni Oliver Sokvari
13/11/26Morse theory
 
Exercises | Old notes with exercises | More old notes with exercises
Kyler Siegel Nikita Handel Oliver Seaman
20/11/26Minimal surfaces
 
Notes with exercises
Mikhail Karpukhin Ethan Sosin Edison Xie
27/11/26Hodge Theory
 
Notes | Exercises
Olivier de Gaay Fortman Alex Pawelko Edward Young
4/12/26Ordinary Double Points
 
Richard Thomas Songchen Liu Zhengyang Cui
11/12/263-manifolds
 
Exercises
Mehdi Yazdi