Homology with local coefficients and characteristic classes

Abstract

In this thesis, we are concerned with the study of cohomology with local coefficients and applications to (non-orientable) real vector bundles. The thesis consists of an introduction and three separate sections. The introduction gives some motivation for considering cohomology with local coefficients and an outline of the results obtained. The first section deals with a general discussion of such cohomology groups and contains a Künneth Theorem for such groups. The second section is devoted to some computations which are needed later and the final section gives a complete description of the integral cohomology of the spaces $BO(n)$ and $BSO(n)$.