Rob Kirby, UC Berkeley, 4-Manifolds are Broken Lefschetz Fibrations

Abstract: I will discuss the theorem in the title, what it means, how it is proved, as well as the issue of uniqueness of such BLF's. They fit into a program for defining the Seiberg-Witten invariants by counting suitable pseudoholomorphic curves, and I will outline our hopes for how this program should go.