COMMENTS BY THE EDITORS
The Second Conference on Compact Transformation Groups was held
at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst from June 7 to June 18,
1971 under the sponsorship of the Advanced Science Education Program
of the National Science Foundation. There were a total of 70
participants at the conference.
As was the case at the first conference at Tulane University in
1967, the emphasis continued to be on differentiable transformation
groups. In this connection there was a continued application of
surgery typified by the lectures of Browder, Shaneson, and Yang
(joint work with Montgomery). A new feature was the applications of
the Atiyah-Singer Index Theorem to differentiable transformation
groups typified by the lectures of Hinrichsen, Petrie, and Rothenberg.
In connection with topological and algebraic methods significant
innovations were made by Raymond (joint work with Conner) in the
construction of manifolds admitting no effective finite group action, by
R. Lee in studying free actions of finite groups on spheres using
ideas and methods derived from algebraic K-theory and by Su (joint
work with W. Y. Hsiang) in applying the notion of geometric weight
systems developed recently by W. Y. Hsiang. There were several
lectures on algebraic varieties by Michael Davis, Peter Orlik, and
Philip Wagreich. Interest in this area arose from the application
several years ago of Brieskorn varieties to the study of actions on
homotopy spheres.