Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Bessa [Be] proved that for given $n$ and
${{i}_{0}}$, there exists an
$\varepsilon (\text{n,}\,{{i}_{0}})\,>\,0$ depending on
$n$,
${{i}_{0}}$ such that if
$M$ admits a metric
$g$ satisfying
$\text{Ri}{{\text{c}}_{(M,g)}}\ge n-1,\text{in}{{\text{j}}_{(M,g)}}\ge {{i}_{0}}\,>\,0$ and
$\text{dia}{{\text{m}}_{(M,g)}}\,\ge \,\pi \,-\,\varepsilon $, then
$M$ is diffeomorphic to the standard sphere. In this note, we improve this result by replacing a lower bound on the injectivity radius with a lower bound of the conjugate radius.