Instructor
Professor Shelly Harvey
Herman Brown 446
Phone: x3659
shelly at rice dot edu

Course Information
Class meets: MWF 11-11:50pm in HB 427
Office Hours: Tuesday 10-11am, Friday 3-4pm,
Webpage: http://math.rice.edu/~shelly/541s17/

Textbook
There is no required textbook.

Useful references
Lecture notes by Steven Sivek on Contact Geometry
Lecture Notes by John Etnyre on Convex Surfaces
Expository articles by John Etnyre
Contact Geometry by Hansjorg Geiges

Course objectives and learning outcomes
This course will cover the geometry of contact 3-dimensional manifolds and a large part of the course will be spent on convex surface theory. A contact structure is a 2-plane field which is never tangent to any surface embedded in the manifold. It can be thought of as the odd-dimensional analog of a symplectic structure. Topics covered: Basic definitions, Darboux's theorem, Gray's theorem, existence of contact structures, Legendrian and transverse knots, convex surfaces theory, open book decompositions, Stein fillability, overtwisted vs tight contact stuctures. By the end of the course, the student will have a thorough understanding of the material presented in class.

Grades
Students are required to attend every lecture (unless they have permission from the instructor to miss). Your grade is completely determined by attendance. In order to get an A, you must miss fewer than 4 lectures. If you miss 4-6 lectures, you get a B. If you miss 7-9 lectures, you get a C. If you miss 10-12 lectures, you get a D. If you miss more than 12 lectures, you get an F.

Homework and Exams
There will be no homeworks or exams.

Disability Support
Any student with a documented disability seeking academic adjustments or accommodations is requested to speak with me during the first two weeks of class. All discussions will remain as confidential as possible. Students with disabilities will also need to contact the Disability Support Services Office in the Ley Student Center.