ABSTRACT
The subject of topological rigidity originated in the late 60's and early 70's
with work of Novikov on the topological invariance of rational
Pontrjagin classes and work of Kirby-Siebenmann on the triangulation
of topological manifolds.
I will discuss these classical results along with recent developments
in the theory. New results include work on the problem of
characterizing topological manifolds among topological spaces and the
problem of determining when a sequence of topological manifolds in
Gromov-Hausdorff space converges to a manifold homeomorphic to at
least some of the terms of the sequence. The lecture should be
suitable for a general audience.