Cobordism of algebraic knots

Summary The isolated singularities of complex hypersurfaces are studied by considering the topology of the highly connected submanifolds of spheres determined by the singularity. By introducing the notion of the link of a perturbation of the singularity and using techniques of surgery theory, we are able to describe which invariants associated to a singularity can be used to determine the cobordism type of the singularity.It is shown that the cobordism type is determined by the set of weakly distinguished bases. This result is used to draw a distinction between the classical case of two variables and the higher dimensional problem. That is, we show that the result of Le which states that the cobordism and topological classifications of singularities coincide in the classical dimension does not hold for singularities of functions of more than three variables. Examples of topologically distinct but cobordant singularities are obtained using results of Ebeling.