Groups and Dynamics Seminar

Date: February 1, 2017

Time: 3:00PM - 4:00PM

Location: BLOC 220

Speaker: Volodymyr Nekrashevych

Title: On Rubin's theorem

Abstract: Rubin's theorems give conditions under which a group acting by homeomorphisms on a topological space uniquely determines (as an abstract group) the space X up to a homeomorphism. For example, a corollary of it is the fact that two manifolds are homeomorphic if and only if their homeomorphism groups are isomorphic as abstract groups. I will describe a simple group-theoretic "translation" of the proof of a Rubin's theorem, and discuss its applications.