I recently read in an interview with Sergei Novikov where he claimed that he introduced "toric neighborhoods" in his proof of the topological invariance of Pontrjagin classes. He draws a comparison to Grothendieck's invention of "generalized open covers" (now known as Grothendieck topologies), and remarks that the same kind of construction was used by Kirby et al. in later developments.

I recently read an interview with Sergei Novikov where he claimed that he introduced "toric neighborhoods" in his proof of the topological invariance of Pontrjagin classes. He draws a comparison to Grothendieck's invention of "generalized open covers" (now known as Grothendieck topologies), and remarks that the same kind of construction was used by Kirby et al. in later developments.