Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 November 1998
We show that the non-existence of elements in the p-stem πSp of Hopf invariant one implies that: there exists no smooth map f[ratio ]M→N with only fold singularities when M is a closed n-dimensional manifold with odd Euler characteristic and N is an almost parallelizable p-dimensional manifold (n[ges ]p), provided that p≠1, 3, 7. In fact, the result itself is originally due to Kikuchi and Saeki [25, 34]. Our proof clarifies the relationship between the two problems and gives a new insight to the problem of the global singularity theory. Furthermore we generalize the above result to maps with only Morin singularities of types Ak with k[les ]3 when p≠1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8.