Proceedings of the Gokova Geometry-Topology Conference 1998

This volume features lively and engaging articles from the lecturers and the participants of the 6th Gokova Geometry-Topology Conference, held on the shores of Gokova Bay, Turkey, in May of 1998. This conference is dedicated to Rob Kirby on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Throughout the years he has influenced mathematics with his powerful geometric insight. He is best known for his deep work in geometric topology, most notably the proof of the famous annulus conjecture; With Tubitak's generous support, Gokova Geometry and Topology Conferences were inaugurated seven years ago, and Ron Kirby was one of its founding members. Table of Contents 1. The structure of a solvmanifold's Heegaard splittings-Daryl Cooper and Martin Scharlemann 2. A Fake Cusp and a Fishtail-Selman Akbulut 3. Planar Linkages and Algebraic Sets-Henry C. King 4. A new approach to immersion theory-Colin Rourke and Brian Sanderson 5. A program to search for homotopy 3-spheres-Michael Greene and Colin Rourke 6. Canonical framings for 3-manifolds-Rob Kirby and Paul Melvin 7. Seiberg-Witten invariants of mapping tori, symplectic fixed points, and Lefschetz numbers-Dietmar A. Salamon 8. Simply connected symplectic 4-manifolds with positive signature-Andr?????‚??s I. Stipsicz 9. On Symplectic fillings of 3-manifolds-Paolo Lisca 10. Virtual neighborhoods and pseudo-holomorphic curves-Yongbin Ruan