Talk by Martin Bridson

Martin's title was "Knot my problem: looking for rigidity in group theory"
His abstract was
Abstract: I shall explain two type of rigidity results in group theory that rely on constructions involving knots.
First I shall discuss how knots have figured in the search for groups that are profinitely rigid in the sense
that they can be distinguished from other groups by means of their finite quotients. Second, I shall explain
an extension of the Muller-Schupp embedding theorem: every finitely presented, torsion-free group G can be
embedded in a finitely presented, torsion-free group G* that is asymmetric (i.e. Out(G*)=1).
The first set of results is contained in joint work with Alan Reid and others. The last result is joint work
with Hamish Short.