What's the relation between topology and graph theory
I read the Wikipedia articles for both topology, graph theory (plus topological graph theory). Does topology encompass also graph theory? Or topology is only about studying shapes while graph theory is about relations and the two meet in topological graph theory?
Solution 1:
There are (at least) two ways to answer this question. In the strict definitional sense, you can probably get all of graph theory expressed in the language of topology. If you're really sneaky you can probably do it the other way, too, so you could probably have a good time claiming that "all of graph theory is just part of topology", and likewise "all of topology is just part of graph theory".
However, more importantly I think, the flavour of the two fields are typically quite different. By this I mean, if you happen upon a mathematician these days that considers herself a topologist, chances are she works either on something geometric, or very algebraic, and either way something pretty abstract. On the other hand, if you happen upon a mathematician that considers herself a graph theorist, chances are she works on some pretty concrete objects, possibly with more obvious direct connections to real world applications.
The exceptions to that paragraph are numerous, but sort of prove the rule. There are plenty of topologists that work on very concrete objects, and plenty of graph theorists whose work is very abstract or use tools from algebraic geometry, number theory, etc.
Nonetheless, it's unlikely the two will share much overlap in their mathematical interests, and if they do, you would probably call their shared interest topological graph theory, or combinatorial topology. So, I think your last statement is closest to the truth, although I'd say topology is much more than studying shapes, and graph theory is much more than studying relations ( or at least doesn't reel like you're studying relations when you're doing it ). Examples are probably the best way to demonstrate that, but then this answer will get way too long, and you're better off just reading/doing some of each to get a feeling for what each field is about.
Solution 2:
Someone famously called graph theory "the slums of topology" or something like that, but I wouldn't take that too seriously.
Graphs are one-dimensional topological spaces of a sort. When we talk about connected graphs or homeomorphic graphs, the adjectives have the same meaning as in topology. So graph theory can be regarded as a subset of the topology of, say, one-dimensional simplicial complexes. While graph theory mostly uses its own peculiar methods, topological tools such as homology theory are occasionally useful.
A connected graph has a natural distance function, so it can be viewed as a kind of discrete metric space. So graph theory can be regarded as a subset of the topology of metric spaces.
The Tychonoff product theorem of general topology has application to some questions about infinite graphs, as may be seen in the answer to this question.
A topological space is defined by points and open sets. It could be construed as a bipartite graph: the points are vertices in one partite set, the open sets are vertices in the other partite set, and each open set is joined by edges to its elements. But this is crazy.
Certain weird counterexamples in general topology are constructed by topologizing the space of maximal independent subsets of an infinite graph.
Topological graph theory is something else again. Graphs are considered as embedded in or drawn on a topological surface, leading to such concepts as planarity and the genus of a graph.