In this thesis we will look at a correspondence which was discovered by A. Dold and D. Kan independently, hence it is called the \emph{Dold-Kan correspondence}. Abstractly it is the following equivalence of categories:
It is interesting because objects on the left hand side are considered to be algebraic of nature, whereas objects on the right are more topological. In particular this correspondence also gives a isomorphism between homology groups (on the left hand side) and homotopy groups (on the right hand side). A bit more precise:
$$\pi_n(A)\iso H_n(N(A))\text{ for all } n \in\N$$