[美] Allen Hatcher

Hatcher received his Ph.D. under the supervision of Hans Samelson at Stanford University in 1971. He went on to become a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Since 1983 he has been a professor at Cornell University.

This geometrically flavored introduction to algebraic topology has the dual goals of serving as a textbook for a standard graduate-level course and as a background reference for many additional topics that do not usually fit into such a course. The broad coverage includes both the homological and homotopical sides of the subject. Care has been taken to present a readable, self-contained exposition, with many examples and exercises, aimed at the student or the researcher from another area of mathematics seeing the subject for the first time. The four main chapters present the basic core material of algebraic topology: fundamental groups, homology, cohomology, and higher homotopy groups. Each chapter concludes with a generous selection of optional topics, accounting for nearly half the book altogether.