Article · Wikipedia archive · Last revised Jun 14, 2026

Zeeman conjecture

In mathematics, the Zeeman conjecture or Zeeman's collapsibility conjecture asks whether given a finite contractible 2-dimensional CW complex , the space is collapsible. It can nowadays be restated as the claim that for any 2-complex which is homotopy equivalent to a point, some barycentric subdivision of is collapsible.

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In mathematics, the Zeeman conjecture or Zeeman's collapsibility conjecture asks whether given a finite contractible 2-dimensional CW complex K {\displaystyle K} , the space K × [ 0 , 1 ] {\displaystyle K\times [0,1]} is collapsible. It can nowadays be restated as the claim that for any 2-complex G {\displaystyle G} which is homotopy equivalent to a point, some barycentric subdivision of G × [ 0 , 1 ] {\displaystyle G\times [0,1]} is collapsible.1

The conjecture, due to Christopher Zeeman, implies the Poincaré conjecture and the Andrews–Curtis conjecture.

References

References

  1. Adiprasito; Benedetti (2012), Subdivisions, shellability, and the Zeeman conjecture, arXiv:1202.6606v2 Corollary 3.5