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Homotopy theory

Hatcher's Chapter 4 (pages 337–518). Mapped, not yet decomposed.

The chapter returns to the homotopy groups πₙ(X) that Chapter 1 began, now with homology available as a tool. The tension it works through is that πₙ is the more natural invariant and the harder one: it has no excision, no Mayer–Vietoris, and πₙ(Sᵏ) is unknown in general, yet Whitehead's theorem says a map of CW complexes inducing isomorphisms on all πₙ is a homotopy equivalence.

Homotopy groups gives the definitions, Whitehead's theorem, and cellular and CW approximation.

Elementary methods of calculation supplies what computation there is: the Freudenthal suspension theorem, the Hurewicz theorem relating the first nontrivial πₙ to Hₙ, fiber bundles and their long exact sequence, and stable homotopy groups.

Connections with cohomology represents cohomology by Eilenberg–MacLane spaces, develops fibrations, Postnikov towers, and obstruction theory.

Mathlib defines HomotopyGroup in Mathlib/Topology/Homotopy/HomotopyGroup.lean and has substantial model-category and simplicial-homotopy infrastructure in AlgebraicTopology/ModelCategory/ and AlgebraicTopology/SimplicialSet/, which is a different and in places more modern route to this material than Hatcher's. None of the chapter's named theorems is upstream.

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