Stiefel-Whitney classes of manifolds (Q1237975)

The author axiomatizes the Stiefel-Whitney classes of closed manifolds and gives a proof of Wu's theorem: If \(M^n\) is a closed \(n\)-manifold and \(v = 1+ v_1+ \ldots+v_n\) \((v_i\in H^i (M;Z_2))\) is defined by \(\langle v_i\cup x, [M]\rangle = \langle Sq^i x, [M]\rangle\) for all \(x\in H^{n-i}(M;Z_2)\), then \(w= Sqv\) is the Stiefel-Whitney class of \(M\). The axioms for the Stiefel-Whitney classes \(w(M) \in H^*(M;Z_2)\) of closed manifolds \(M\) are the following (1)--(3): (1) If \(i: M\to N\) is an imbedding with trivial normal bundle, then \(w(M)= i^*w(N)\); (2) \(w(M\times N)=\mathrm{pr}_M^* w(M)\cup \mathrm{pr}_N^* w(N)\); (3) \(w(\mathbb{RP}(n))= (1 + a)^{n+1}\), where \(\mathbb{RP}(n)\) is the \(n\)-dimensional real projective space and \(a\in (\mathbb{RP}(n);Z_2)\) is the non-zero class (Proposition 1).