Reprint from GAFA, Vol. 5 (1995), No. 2. Enlarged by a short biography of Mikhail Gromov and a list of publications. In the last decades of the XX century tremendous progress has been achieved in geometry. The discovery of deep interrelations between geometry and other fields including algebra, analysis and topology has pushed it into the mainstream of modern mathematics. This Special Issue of Geometric And Functional Analysis (GAFA) in honour of Mikhail Gromov contains 14 papers which give a wide panorama of recent fundamental developments in modern geometry and its related subjects. CONTRIBUTORS: J. Bourgain, J. Cheeger, J. Cogdell, A. Connes, Y. Eliashberg, H. Hofer, F. Lalonde, W. Luo, G. Margulis, D. McDuff, H. Moscovici, G. Mostow, S. Novikov, G. Perelman, I. Piatetski-Shapiro, G. Pisier, X. Rong, Z. Rudnick, D. Salamon, P. Sarnak, R. Schoen, M. Shubin, K. Wysocki, and E. Zehnder. The book is a collection of important results and an enduring source of new ideas for researchers and students in a broad spectrum of directions related to all aspects of Geometry and its applications to Functional Analysis, PDE, Analytic Number Theory and Physics.

Over the past two decades a general mathematical theory of infinite electrical networks has been developed. This is the first book to present the salient features of this theory in a coherent exposition. Using the basic tools of functional analysis and graph theory, the author presents the fundamental developments of the past two decades and discusses applications to other areas of mathematics. The first half of the book presents existence and uniqueness theorems for both infinite-power and finite-power voltage-current regimes, and the second half discusses methods for solving problems in infinite cascades and grids. A notable feature is the recent invention of transfinite networks, roughly analogous to Cantor's extension of the natural numbers to the transfinite ordinals. The last chapter is a survey of applications to exterior problems of partial differential equations, random walks on infinite graphs, and networks of operators on Hilbert spaces. The jump in complexity from finite electrical networks to infinite ones is comparable to the jump in complexity from finite-dimensional to infinite-dimensional spaces. Many of the questions that are conventionally asked about finite networks are presently unanswerable for infinite networks, while questions that are meaningless for finite networks crop up for infinite ones and lead to surprising results, such as the occasional collapse of Kirchoff's laws in infinite regimes. Some central concepts have no counterpart in the finite case, as for example the extremities of an infinite network, the perceptibility of infinity, and the connections at infinity.

This book is the first volume in a two-volume set, which will provide the complete proof of classification of two important classes of geometries, closely related to each other: Petersen and tilde geometries. There is an infinite family of tilde geometries associated with non-split extensions of symplectic groups over a field of two elements. Besides that there are twelve exceptional Petersen and tilde geometries. These exceptional geometries are related to sporadic simple groups, including the famous Monster group and this volume gives a construction for each of the Petersen and tilde geometries which provides an independent existence proof for the corresponding automorphism group. Important applications of Petersen and Tilde geometries are considered, including the so-called Y-presentations for the Monster and related groups, and a complete indentification of Y-groups is given. This is an essential purchase for researchers into finite group theory, finite geometries and algebraic combinatorics.

One service mathematics has rendered the "Et moi, .... si j'a\'ait su comment en revenir, human race. It has put common sense back je n'y scrais point alit: Jules Verne where it belongs, on the topmost shelf next to the dusty canister labc\led 'discarded non The series is divergent; therefore we may be sense'. Eric T. 8c\l able to do something with it. O. Hcaviside Mathematics is a tool for thought. A highly necessary tool in a world where both feedback and non linearities abound. Similarly, all kinds of parts of mathematics serve as tools for other parts and for other sciences. Applying a simple rewriting rule to the quote on the right above one finds such statements as: 'One service topology has rendered mathematical physics .. .'; 'One service logic has rendered com puter science .. .'; 'One service category theory has rendered mathematics .. .'. All arguably true. And all statements obtainable this way form part of the raison d'etre of this series."

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Automated Deduction in Geometry, ADG 2010, held in Munich, Germany in July 2010.
The 13 revised full papers presented were carefully selected during two rounds of reviewing and improvement from the lectures given at the workshop. Topics addressed by the papers are incidence geometry using some kind of combinatoric argument; computer algebra; software implementation; as well as logic and proof assistants.

On February 15-17, 1993, a conference on Large Scale Optimization, hosted by the Center for Applied Optimization, was held at the University of Florida. The con ference was supported by the National Science Foundation, the U. S. Army Research Office, and the University of Florida, with endorsements from SIAM, MPS, ORSA and IMACS. Forty one invited speakers presented papers on mathematical program ming and optimal control topics with an emphasis on algorithm development, real world applications and numerical results. Participants from Canada, Japan, Sweden, The Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Greece, and Denmark gave the meeting an important international component. At tendees also included representatives from IBM, American Airlines, US Air, United Parcel Serice, AT & T Bell Labs, Thinking Machines, Army High Performance Com puting Research Center, and Argonne National Laboratory. In addition, the NSF sponsored attendance of thirteen graduate students from universities in the United States and abroad. Accurate modeling of scientific problems often leads to the formulation of large scale optimization problems involving thousands of continuous and/or discrete vari ables. Large scale optimization has seen a dramatic increase in activities in the past decade. This has been a natural consequence of new algorithmic developments and of the increased power of computers. For example, decomposition ideas proposed by G. Dantzig and P. Wolfe in the 1960's, are now implement able in distributed process ing systems, and today many optimization codes have been implemented on parallel machines.

Approach your problems from the right end It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is and begin with the answers. Then one day, that they can't see the problem. perhaps you will find the final question. G. K. Chesterton. The Scandal of Father 'The Hermit Gad in Crane Feathers' in R. Brown'The point of a Pin'. van Gulik's TheChinese Maze Murders. Growing specialization and diversification have brought a host of monographs and textbooks on increasingly specialized topics. However, the "tree" of knowledge of mathematics and related fields does not grow only by putting forth new branches. It also happens, quite often in fact, that branches which were thought to be completely disparate are suddenly seen to be related. Further, the kind and level of sophistication of mathematics applied in various sciences has changed drastically in recent years: measure theory is used (non-trivially) in regional and theoretical economics; algebraic geometry interacts with physics; the Minkowsky lemma, coding theory and the structure of water meet one another in packing and covering theory; quantum fields, crystal defects and mathematical programming profit from homotopy theory; Lie algebras are relevant to filtering; and prediction and electrical engineering can use Stein spaces. And in addition to this there are such new emerging SUbdisciplines as "experimental mathematics," "CFD," "completely integrable systems," "chaos, synergetics and large-scale order," which are almost impossible to fit into the existing classification schemes. They draw upon widely different sections of mathematics.

After almost half a century of existence the main question about quantum field theory seems still to be: what does it really describe? and not yet: does it provide a good description of nature? J. A. Swieca Ever since quantum field theory has been applied to strong int- actions, physicists have tried to obtain a nonperturbative und- standing. Dispersion theoretic sum rules, the S-matrix bootstrap, the dual models (and their reformulation in string language) and s the conformal bootstrap of the 70 are prominent cornerstones on this thorny path. Furthermore instantons and topological solitons have shed some light on the nonperturbati ve vacuum structure respectively on the existence of nonperturbative "charge" s- tors. To these attempts an additional one was recently added', which is yet not easily describable in terms of one "catch phrase". Dif- rent from previous attempts, it is almost entirely based on new noncommutative algebraic structures: "exchange algebras" whose "structure constants" are braid matrices which generate a ho- morphism of the infini te (inducti ve limi t) Artin braid group Boo into a von Neumann algebra. Mathematically there is a close 2 relation to recent work of Jones * Its physical origin is the resul t of a subtle analysis of Ei nstein causality expressed in terms of local commutati vi ty of space-li ke separated fields. It is most clearly recognizable in conformal invariant quantum field theories.

The representation theory of Lie groups plays a central role in both clas sical and recent developments in many parts of mathematics and physics. In August, 1995, the Fifth Workshop on Representation Theory of Lie Groups and its Applications took place at the Universidad Nacional de Cordoba in Argentina. Organized by Joseph Wolf, Nolan Wallach, Roberto Miatello, Juan Tirao, and Jorge Vargas, the workshop offered expository courses on current research, and individual lectures on more specialized topics. The present vol ume reflects the dual character of the workshop. Many of the articles will be accessible to graduate students and others entering the field. Here is a rough outline of the mathematical content. (The editors beg the indulgence of the readers for any lapses in this preface in the high standards of historical and mathematical accuracy that were imposed on the authors of the articles. ) Connections between flag varieties and representation theory for real re ductive groups have been studied for almost fifty years, from the work of Gelfand and Naimark on principal series representations to that of Beilinson and Bernstein on localization. The article of Wolf provides a detailed introduc tion to the analytic side of these developments. He describes the construction of standard tempered representations in terms of square-integrable partially harmonic forms (on certain real group orbits on a flag variety), and outlines the ingredients in the Plancherel formula. Finally, he describes recent work on the complex geometry of real group orbits on partial flag varieties."

This book is based on notes for the course Fractals: lntroduction, Basics and Perspectives given by MichaelF. Barnsley, RobertL. Devaney, Heinz-Otto Peit gen, Dietmar Saupe and Richard F. Voss. The course was chaired by Heinz-Otto Peitgen and was part of the SIGGRAPH '87 (Anaheim, California) course pro gram. Though the five chapters of this book have emerged from those courses we have tried to make this book a coherent and uniformly styled presentation as much as possible. It is the first book which discusses fractals solely from the point of view of computer graphics. Though fundamental concepts and algo rithms are not introduced and discussed in mathematical rigor we have made a serious attempt to justify and motivate wherever it appeared to be desirable. Ba sic algorithms are typically presented in pseudo-code or a description so close to code that a reader who is familiar with elementary computer graphics should find no problem to get started. Mandelbrot's fractal geometry provides both a description and a mathemat ical model for many of the seemingly complex forms and patterns in nature and the sciences. Fractals have blossomed enormously in the past few years and have helped reconnect pure mathematics research with both natural sciences and computing. Computer graphics has played an essential role both in its de velopment and rapidly growing popularity. Conversely, fractal geometry now plays an important role in the rendering, modelling and animation of natural phenomena and fantastic shapes in computer graphics."

It has been hard for me to escape the imprint of my early, strong, but scattered trains of thought. There was, at the beginning, little to go by; and I saw no clear way to go. This book is accordingly filled with internal tensions that are not, as yet, fully annealed. Subsequent writers may re-present the work, explaining it in a simpler way. Others may simply invert it. I mean by this that, by writing it backwards, from its found ends {practical machinable teeth) to its tentative beginnings (dimly perceived geometrical notions), one might conceivably write a manual, not on how to understand these kinds of gears, but on how to make them. Indeed a manual will need to be written. If this gearing is to be further investigated, evaluated and checked for applicability, prototypes will need to be made. I wish to say again however that my somewhat convoluted way of presenting these early ideas has been inevitable. It has simply not been possible to present a tidy set of explanations and rules without exploring first (and in a somewhat backwards-going direction) the complexities of the kinematic geometry. There remains, now in this book, a putting together of primitive geometric intuition, computer aided exploration of certain areas, geometric explanations of the discovered phenomena, and a loose sprinkling of a relevant algebra cementing the parts together.

1. Preliminaries, Notation, and Terminology n n 1.1. Sets and functions in lR. * Throughout the book, lR. stands for the n-dimensional arithmetic space of points x = (X},X2,'" ,xn)j Ixl is the length of n n a vector x E lR. and (x, y) is the scalar product of vectors x and y in lR. , i.e., for x = (Xl, X2, *.* , xn) and y = (y}, Y2,**., Yn), Ixl = Jx~ + x~ + ...+ x~, (x, y) = XIYl + X2Y2 + ...+ XnYn. n Given arbitrary points a and b in lR. , we denote by [a, b] the segment that joins n them, i.e. the collection of points x E lR. of the form x = >.a + I'b, where>. + I' = 1 and >. ~ 0, I' ~ O. n We denote by ei, i = 1,2, ...,n, the vector in lR. whose ith coordinate is equal to 1 and the others vanish. The vectors el, e2, ...,en form a basis for the space n lR. , which is called canonical. If P( x) is some proposition in a variable x and A is a set, then {x E A I P(x)} denotes the collection of all the elements of A for which the proposition P( x) is true.

One service mathematics has rendered the 'Et moi, ..., si j'avait su comment en revenir, je n'y serais point aile.' human race. It has put common sense back Jules Verne where it belongs, on the topmost shelf next to the dusty canister labelled 'discarded n- sense'. The series is divergent; therefore we may be able to do something with it. Eric T. Bell O. Heaviside Matht"natics is a tool for thought. A highly necessary tool in a world where both feedback and non linearities abound. Similarly, all kinds of parts of mathematics seNe as tools for other parts and for other sciences. Applying a simple rewriting rule to the quote on the right above one finds such statements as: 'One service topology has rendered mathematical physics .. .'; 'One service logic has rendered com puter science .. .'; 'One service category theory has rendered mathematics .. .'. All arguably true. And all statements obtainable this way form part of the raison d'etre of this series."

This book is about an investigation of recent developments in the field of sympletic and contact structures on four- and three-dimensional manifolds from a topologist 's point of view. In it, two main issues are addressed: what kind of sympletic and contact structures we can construct via surgery theory and what kind of sympletic and contact structures are not allowed via gauge theory and the newly invented Heegaard-Floer theory.

Non-scalar variational problems appear in different fields. In geometry, for in stance, we encounter the basic problems of harmonic maps between Riemannian manifolds and of minimal immersions; related questions appear in physics, for example in the classical theory of a-models. Non linear elasticity is another example in continuum mechanics, while Oseen-Frank theory of liquid crystals and Ginzburg-Landau theory of superconductivity require to treat variational problems in order to model quite complicated phenomena. Typically one is interested in finding energy minimizing representatives in homology or homotopy classes of maps, minimizers with prescribed topological singularities, topological charges, stable deformations i. e. minimizers in classes of diffeomorphisms or extremal fields. In the last two or three decades there has been growing interest, knowledge, and understanding of the general theory for this kind of problems, often referred to as geometric variational problems. Due to the lack of a regularity theory in the non scalar case, in contrast to the scalar one - or in other words to the occurrence of singularities in vector valued minimizers, often related with concentration phenomena for the energy density - and because of the particular relevance of those singularities for the problem being considered the question of singling out a weak formulation, or completely understanding the significance of various weak formulations becames non trivial."

The last thirty years were a period of continuous and intense growth in the subject of dynamical systems. New concepts and techniques and at the same time new areas of applications of the theory were found. The 31st session of the Seminaire de Mathematiques Superieures (SMS) held at the Universite de Montreal in July 1992 was on dynamical systems having as its center theme "Bifurcations and periodic orbits of vector fields." This session of the SMS was a NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI). This ASI had the purpose of acquainting the participants with some of the most recent developments and of stimulating new research around the chosen center theme. These developments include the major tools of the new resummation techniques with applications, in particular to the proof of the non-accumulation of limit-cycles for real-analytic plane vector fields. One of the aims of the ASI was to bring together methods from real and complex dy namical systems. There is a growing awareness that an interplay between real and complex methods is both useful and necessary for the solution of some of the problems. Complex techniques become powerful tools which yield valuable information when applied to the study of the dynamics of real vector fields. The recent developments show that no rigid frontiers between disciplines exist and that interesting new developments occur when ideas and techniques from diverse disciplines are married. One of the aims of the ASI was to show these multiple interactions at work."

Diophantine problems represent some of the strongest aesthetic attractions to algebraic geometry. They consist in giving criteria for the existence of solutions of algebraic equations in rings and fields, and eventually for the number of such solutions. The fundamental ring of interest is the ring of ordinary integers Z, and the fundamental field of interest is the field Q of rational numbers. One discovers rapidly that to have all the technical freedom needed in handling general problems, one must consider rings and fields of finite type over the integers and rationals. Furthermore, one is led to consider also finite fields, p-adic fields (including the real and complex numbers) as representing a localization of the problems under consideration. We shall deal with global problems, all of which will be of a qualitative nature. On the one hand we have curves defined over say the rational numbers. Ifthe curve is affine one may ask for its points in Z, and thanks to Siegel, one can classify all curves which have infinitely many integral points. This problem is treated in Chapter VII. One may ask also for those which have infinitely many rational points, and for this, there is only Mordell's conjecture that if the genus is :;;; 2, then there is only a finite number of rational points.

Group cohomology has a rich history that goes back a century or more. Its origins are rooted in investigations of group theory and num ber theory, and it grew into an integral component of algebraic topology. In the last thirty years, group cohomology has developed a powerful con nection with finite group representations. Unlike the early applications which were primarily concerned with cohomology in low degrees, the in teractions with representation theory involve cohomology rings and the geometry of spectra over these rings. It is this connection to represen tation theory that we take as our primary motivation for this book. The book consists of two separate pieces. Chronologically, the first part was the computer calculations of the mod-2 cohomology rings of the groups whose orders divide 64. The ideas and the programs for the calculations were developed over the last 10 years. Several new features were added over the course of that time. We had originally planned to include only a brief introduction to the calculations. However, we were persuaded to produce a more substantial text that would include in greater detail the concepts that are the subject of the calculations and are the source of some of the motivating conjectures for the com putations. We have gathered together many of the results and ideas that are the focus of the calculations from throughout the mathematical literature."

JeanVaillant L'oeuvre de Jean Leray est originale et profonde; ses theoremes et ses theories sont au coeur des recherches mathematiques actuelles: la beaute de chacun de ses travaux ne se divise pas. Son cours de Princeton, sous forme de notes en anglais (et d'une traduction en russe) en est une belle illustration: ce cours presente les equations aux derivees partielles a partir de la transformation de Laplace et du theoreme de Cauchy-Kowaleska et contient l'essentiel de nombreusesrecherchesmodernes. Lerayavaitpourbutderesoudreunprobleme, souvent d'origine mecanique ou physique - qui se pose, et non qu'on se pose -, de demontrer un theoreme; il construit alors son oeuvre de facon complete et essentiellement intrinseque. En fait, Leray construit une theorie dont l'extension tient a son origine naturelle, l'acuite, la perfection, la profondeur d'esprit de son auteur;enmemetempsildominelescalculs,qu'ilmeneavecplaisiretelegance: "Il n'y a pas de mathematiques sans calculs" disait-il. La science etait au centre de la vie de Jean Leray. Il s'inquietait de sa sauvegarde. Rappelons quelques phrases de ses textes de 1974: "D'ailleurs la science ne s'apprend pas: elle se comprend. Elle n'est pas lettre morte et les livres n'assurent pas sa perennite; elle est une pensee vivante. Pour la maitriser notre esprit doit, habilement guide, la redecouvrir de meme que notre corps a du revivre dans le sein mat- nel, toute l'evolution qui crea notre espece. Aussi n'y a-t-il qu'une facon ef?cace d'enseigner les sciences et les techniques: transmettre l'esprit de recherche.

This book is written in a pedagogical style intelligible for graduate students. It reviews recent progress in black-hole and wormhole theory and in mathematical cosmology within the framework of Einstein's field equations and beyond, including quantum effects. This collection of essays, written by leading scientists of long standing reputation, should become an indispensable source for future research.

This book provides a solid and uniform derivation of the various properties Bezier and B-spline representations have, and shows the beauty of the underlying rich mathematical structure. The book focuses on the core concepts of Computer Aided Geometric Design and provides a clear and illustrative presentation of the basic principles, as well as a treatment of advanced material including multivariate splines, some subdivision techniques and constructions of free form surfaces with arbitrary smoothness. The text is beautifully illustrated with many excellent figures to emphasize the geometric constructive approach of this book.

The pioneering work of French mathematician Pierre de Fermat has attracted the attention of mathematicians for over 350 years. This book was written in honor of the 400th anniversary of his birth, providing readers with an overview of the many properties of Fermat numbers and demonstrating their applications in areas such as number theory, probability theory, geometry, and signal processing. This book introduces a general mathematical audience to basic mathematical ideas and algebraic methods connected with the Fermat numbers.

This book contains a mathematical exposition of analogies between classical (Hamiltonian) mechanics, geometrical optics, and hydrodynamics. In addition, it details some interesting applications of the general theory of vortices, such as applications in numerical methods, stability theory, and the theory of exact integration of equations of dynamics.

Designed for a junior-senior level course for mathematics majors, including those who plan to teach in secondary school. The first chapter presents several finite geometries in an axiomatic framework, while Chapter 2 continues the synthetic approach in introducing both Euclids and ideas of non-Euclidean geometry. There follows a new introduction to symmetry and hands-on explorations of isometries that precedes an extensive analytic treatment of similarities and affinities. Chapter 4 presents plane projective geometry both synthetically and analytically, and the new Chapter 5 uses a descriptive and exploratory approach to introduce chaos theory and fractal geometry, stressing the self-similarity of fractals and their generation by transformations from Chapter 3. Throughout, each chapter includes a list of suggested resources for applications or related topics in areas such as art and history, plus this second edition points to Web locations of author-developed guides for dynamic software explorations of the Poincare model, isometries, projectivities, conics and fractals. Parallel versions are available for "Cabri Geometry" and "Geometers Sketchpad".