A caracter\'istica de Euler-Poincar\'e

Abstract

We introduce the Euler-Poincar\'e's characteristic with an elementary way and historically. We explain also why one should call Descartes-Poincar\'e characteristic instead of the Euler-Poincar\'e's characteristic. All the considered spaces are compact and without boundary. We work essentially on smooth and oriented surfaces . However, we work also on singular and non-oriented surfaces. We provide also the results which may be extended for the case of superior dimension.