The Nielsen number as an isotopy invariant

Let M be a compact topological manifold of dimension at least 5 and let h : M → M be an embedding. The Nielsen number N(h) gives a lower bound for the number of fixed points of h. It is well known that h is homotopic to a self-map of M which has exactly N(h) fixed points. In this paper we strengthen this result by showing that h is isotopic to an embedding with N(h) fixed points.