The purpose of this note is to announce a new isotopy invariant of oriented links of tamely embedded circles in 3-space.We represent links by plane projections, using the customary conventions that the image of the link is a union of transversely intersecting immersed curves, each provided with an orientation, and undercrossings are indicated by broken lines. Following Conway [6], we use the symbols L+, Lo, L_ to denote links having plane projections which agree except in a small disk, and inside that disk are represented by the pictures of Figure 1.Conway showed that the one-variable Alexander polynomials of L+, Lo, L_ (when suitably normalized) satisfy the relation It was evident from the circumstances that the four groups arrived at their results completely independently of each other, although all were inspired by the work of Jones (cf. [10], and also [8, 9]). The degree of simultaneity was such that, by common consent, it was unproductive to try to assess priority. Indeed it would seem that there is enough credit for all to share in.Each of these papers was refereed, and we would have happily published any one of them, had it been the only one under consideration. Because the alternatives of publication of all four or of none were both unsatisfying, all have agreed to the compromise embodied here of a paper carrying all six names as coauthors, consisting of an introductory section describing the basics written by a disinterested party, and followed by four sections, one written by each of the four groups, briefly describing the highlights of their own approach and elaboration.
After a review of the work of Lawvere and Tierney, i t is shown that every topos may be exactly embedded in a product of topoi each with 1 as a generator, and near-exactly embedded in a power of the category of sets. Several metatheorems are then derived. Natural numbers objects are shown to be characterized by exactness properties, which yield the fact that some topoi can not be exactly embedded in powers of the category of s e t s , Whereas abelian categories, nice as they are, appear in various contexts only with the best of luck, topoi appear at the very foundation of mathematics. The theory of topoi provides a method to "algebraicize" much
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