Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

In 1941, Hopf gave a proof of the fact that the rational cohomology of a compact connected Lie group is isomorphic to the cohomology of a product of odd dimensional spheres. The proof is natural in the sense that instead of using the classification of Lie groups, it utilizes the extra algebraic structures, now known as Hopf algebras. In this talk, we will discuss the algebraic background and the proof of the theorem.