Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

This is an expository talk. A classical theorem of Mazur gives a simple criterion for two closed manifolds M, M' to become diffeomorphic after multiplying by the Euclidean n-space, where n large. In the talk I shall prove Mazur's theorem, and then discuss what happens when n is small and M, M' are 3-dimensional lens spaces. The talk shall be accessible to anybody with interest in geometry and topology.