Bundles from the '60s

This photo has been the first to break my unwritten rule of only showing boards and not people. It was sent to me by Brian Sanderson at the University of Warwick, who is also the right-hand person in the photograph. He says that the picture dates from 1965 and shows Christopher Zeeman pointing to a block bundle. In topology, block bundles in the PL category are analogous to normal bundles in the smooth category. The block bundle idea was Brian’s and was subsequently fully developed with Colin Rourke, in the centre. Christopher, on the left, came up with the name on a flight to Oberwolfach, a mathematical retreat in the Black Forest of Germany.

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