Sphere Theorems in Geometry

Abstract

In this paper, we give a survey of various sphere theorems in geometry. These include the topological sphere theorem of Berger and Klingenberg as well as the differentiable version obtained by the authors. These theorems employ a variety of methods, including geodesic and minimal surface techniques as well as Hamilton's Ricci flow. We also obtain here new results concerning complete manifolds with pinched curvature.

Some typos corrected; to appear in Surveys in Differential Geometry