Motivation For The Conjecture
A basic question is the following: if two manifolds are homotopy equivalent, are they homeomorphic? This is not true in general: there are homotopy equivalent lens spaces which are not homeomorphic.
Nevertheless, there are classes of manifolds for which homotopy equivalences between them can be homotoped to homeomorphisms. For instance, the Mostow rigidity theorem states that a homotopy equivalence between closed hyperbolic manifolds is homotopic to an isometry—in particular, to a homeomorphism. The Borel conjecture is a topological reformulation of Mostow rigidity, weakening the hypothesis from hyperbolic manifolds to aspherical manifolds, and similarly weakening the conclusion from an isometry to a homeomorphism.
Read more about this topic: Borel Conjecture
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—June Jordan (b. 1939)
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