I'm a looking for a good book to self-study differential forms. Particularly, I'm looking for a book that is as similar as possible to Bert Mendelson's "Introduction to topology" (i.e. a book that procede by following a: "Definition, theorem, proof" style). In addition, the book that I'm looking for should be as much self consistent as possibile. I'm a first year graduate student in nuclear engineering. My prerequisites are a good understanding of (multivariate and vector) calculus, linear algebra, and a little of functional analysis, Lebesgue integration theory, PDE. I know nothing about differential geometry, but to my (very) poor understanding differential forms and concept like manifolds and so on are linked to each other.
[Math] Good book about differential forms
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Best Answer
Differential forms are things that live on manifolds. So, to learn about differential forms, you should really also learn about manifolds. To this end, the best recommendation I can give is Loring Tu's An Introduction to Manifolds. Tu develops the basic theory of manifolds and differential forms and closes with a exposition of de Rham cohomology, which allows one to extract topological information about a manifold from the behavior of the differential forms on it.