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.

Codes on Euclidean spheres are often referred to as spherical codes. They are of interest from mathematical, physical and engineering points of view. Mathematically the topic belongs to the realm of algebraic combinatorics, with close connections to number theory, geometry, combinatorial theory, and - of course - to algebraic coding theory. The connections to physics occur within areas like crystallography and nuclear physics. In engineering spherical codes are of central importance in connection with error-control in communication systems. In that context the use of spherical codes is often referred to as "coded modulation."

The book offers a first complete treatment of the mathematical theory of codes on Euclidean spheres. Many new results are published here for the first time. Engineering applications are emphasized throughout the text. The theory is illustrated by many examples. The book also contains an extensive table of best known spherical codes in dimensions 3-24, including exact constructions.

This text presents geometry in an exemplary, accessible and attractive form. The book emphasizes both the intellectually stimulating parts of geometry and routine arguments or computations in concrete or classical cases, as well as practical and physical applications. The book also teaches the student fundamental concepts and the difference between important reults and minor technical routines. Altogether, the text presents a coherent high school curriculum for the geometry course. There are many examples and exercises.

This volume, dedicated to Bertram Kostant on the occasion of his 65th birthday, is a collection of 22 invited papers by leading mathematicians working in Lie theory, geometry, algebra, and mathematical physics. Kostant 's fundamental work in all these areas has provided deep new insights and connections, and has created new fields of research. The papers gathered here present original research articles as well as expository papers, broadly reflecting the range of Kostant 's work.

This unique book explores the connections between the geometry of mappings and many important areas of modern mathematics such as harmonic and non-linear analysis, the theory of partial differential equations, conformal geometry and topology. The book contains much new material not published elsewhere and provides students and researchers in many areas with a comprehensive and up to date account of the subject as a whole.

The history of the development of Euclidean, non-Euclidean, and relativistic ideas of the shape of the universe, is presented in this lively account by Jeremy Gray. The parallel postulate of Euclidean geometry occupies a unique position in the history of mathematics. In this book, Jeremy Gray reviews the failure of classical attempts to prove the postulate and then proceeds to show how the work of Gauss, Lobachevskii, and Bolyai, laid the foundations of modern differential geometry, by constructing geometries in which the parallel postulate fails. These investigations in turn enabled the formulation of Einstein's theories of special and general relativity, which today form the basis of our conception of the universe. The author has made every attempt to keep the pre-requisites to a bare minimum. This immensely readable account, contains historical and mathematical material which make it suitable for undergraduate students in the history of science and mathematics. For the second edition, the author has taken the opportunity to update much of the material, and to add a chapter on the emerging story of the Arabic contribution to this fascinating aspect of the history of mathematics.

This book is centered around higher algebraic structures stemming from the work of Murray Gerstenhaber and Jim Stasheff that are now ubiquitous in various areas of mathematics such as algebra, algebraic topology, differential geometry, algebraic geometry, mathematical physics and in theoretical physics such as quantum field theory and string theory. These higher algebraic structures provide a common language essential in the study of deformation quantization, theory of algebroids and groupoids, symplectic field theory, and much more. Each contribution in this volume expands on the ideas of Gerstenhaber and Stasheff. The volume is intended for post-graduate students, mathematical and theoretical physicists, and mathematicians interested in higher structures.

This book is based upon my monograph Index Theory for Hamiltonian Systems with Applications published in 1993 in Chinese, and my notes for lectures and courses given at Nankai University, Brigham Young University, ICTP-Trieste, and the Institute of Mathematics of Academia Sinica during the last ten years. The aim of this book is twofold: (1) to give an introduction to the index theory for symplectic matrix paths and its iteration theory, which form a basis for the Morse theoretical study on Hamilto nian systems, and to give applications of this theory to periodic boundary value problems of nonlinear Hamiltonian systems. Here the iteration theory means the index theory of iterations of periodic solutions and symplectic matrix paths. (2) to serve as a reference book on these topics. There are many different ways to introduce the index theory for symplectic paths in order to establish Morse type index theory of Hamiltonian systems. In this book, I have chosen a relatively elementary way, i.e., the homotopy classification method of symplectic matrix paths. It depends only on linear algebra, point set topology, and certain basic parts of linear functional analysis. I have tried to make this part of the book self-contained and at the same time include all of the major results on these topics so that researchers and students interested in them can read it without substantial difficulties, and can learn the main results in this area for their possible applications."

This book is a visually compelling journey through the unique geometric discoveries of Frank Chester, a contemporary sacred geometer, artist, and sculptor. This art-style book with highly polished design elements leads the reader from discovery to discovery, complemented by original text from the author, a PhD who has studied Frank's work from its inception, when it was just seven sticks in a ball of mud on the banks of the American River... From the back cover: The ancient tradition of Sacred Geometry is still alive and well in the person of Frank Chester. He has discovered a new geometric form that unites the five Platonic solids and provides some startling indications about the form and function of the human heart. This new form, called the Chestahedron, was discovered in 2000, and is a seven-sided polyhedron with surfaces of equal area. Frank has been exploring the form and its significance for over a decade. His work has potential implications across a number of areas, from physiology to architecture, sculpture, geology, and beyond. Inspired by the work of Rudolf Steiner, Frank sees a deep connection between form and spirit. This book gives a brief, highly visual overview of some of Frank's discoveries, and presents a compelling series of indications for future research.

This book is a course in general topology, intended for students in the first year of the second cycle (in other words, students in their third univer sity year). The course was taught during the first semester of the 1979-80 academic year (three hours a week of lecture, four hours a week of guided work). Topology is the study of the notions of limit and continuity and thus is, in principle, very ancient. However, we shall limit ourselves to the origins of the theory since the nineteenth century. One of the sources of topology is the effort to clarify the theory of real-valued functions of a real variable: uniform continuity, uniform convergence, equicontinuity, Bolzano-Weierstrass theorem (this work is historically inseparable from the attempts to define with precision what the real numbers are). Cauchy was one of the pioneers in this direction, but the errors that slip into his work prove how hard it was to isolate the right concepts. Cantor came along a bit later; his researches into trigonometric series led him to study in detail sets of points of R (whence the concepts of open set and closed set in R, which in his work are intermingled with much subtler concepts). The foregoing alone does not justify the very general framework in which this course is set. The fact is that the concepts mentioned above have shown themselves to be useful for objects other than the real numbers."

Modern physics is confronted with a large variety of complex spatial patterns. Although both spatial statisticians and statistical physicists study random geometrical structures, there has been only little interaction between the two up to now because of different traditions and languages. This volume aims to change this situation by presenting in a clear way fundamental concepts of spatial statistics which are of great potential value for condensed matter physics and materials sciences in general, and for porous media, percolation and Gibbs processes in particular. Geometric aspects, in particular ideas of stochastic and integral geometry, play a central role throughout. With nonspecialist researchers and graduate students also in mind, prominent physicists give an excellent introduction here to modern ideas of statistical physics pertinent to this exciting field of research.

¿The present book is a marvelous introduction in the modern theory of manifolds and differential forms. The undergraduate student can closely examine tangent spaces, basic concepts of differential forms, integration on manifolds, Stokes theorem, de Rham- cohomology theorem, differential forms on Riema-nnian manifolds, elements of the theory of differential equations on manifolds (Laplace-Beltrami operators). Every chapter contains useful exercises for the students.¿ ¿ ZENTRALBLATT MATH

..".A nice feature of the book is] that at various points the authors provide examples, or rather counterexamples, that clearly show what can go wrong...This is a nicely-written book that] studies algebraic differential modules in several variables."

--Mathematical Reviews

These two volumes contain eighteen invited papers by distinguished mathematicians in honor of the eightieth birthday of Israel M. Gelfand, one of the most remarkable mathematicians of our time. Gelfand has played a crucial role in the development of functional analysis during the last half-century. His work and his philosophy have in fact helped shape our understanding of the term 'functional analysis'. The papers in these volumes largely concern areas in which Gelfand has a very strong interest today, including geometric quantum field theory, representation theory, combinatorial structures underlying various 'continuous' constructions, quantum groups and geometry.

The textbook Geometry, published in French by CEDICjFernand Nathan and in English by Springer-Verlag (scheduled for 1985) was very favorably re ceived. Nevertheless, many readers found the text too concise and the exercises at the end of each chapter too difficult, and regretted the absence of any hints for the solution of the exercises. This book is intended to respond, at least in part, to these needs. The length of the textbook (which will be referred to as B] throughout this book) and the volume of the material covered in it preclude any thought of publishing an expanded version, but we considered that it might prove both profitable and amusing to some of our readers to have detailed solutions to some of the exercises in the textbook. At the same time, we planned this book to be independent, at least to a certain extent, from the textbook; thus, we have provided summaries of each of its twenty chapters, condensing in a few pages and under the same titles the most important notions and results, used in the solution of the problems. The statement of the selected problems follows each summary, and they are numbered in order, with a reference to the corresponding place in B]. These references are not meant as indications for the solutions of the problems. In the body of each summary there are frequent references to B], and these can be helpful in elaborating a point which is discussed too cursorily in this book."

These two volumes contain eighteen invited papers by distinguished mathematicians in honor of the eightieth birthday of Israel M. Gelfand, one of the most remarkable mathematicians of our time. Gelfand has played a crucial role in the development of functional analysis during the last half-century. His work and his philosophy have in fact helped shape our understanding of the term 'functional analysis'. The papers in these volumes largely concern areas in which Gelfand has a very strong interest today, including geometric quantum field theory, representation theory, combinatorial structures underlying various 'continuous' constructions, quantum groups and geometry.

C.S. Seshadri turned seventy on the 29th of February, 2002. To mark this occasion, a symposium was held in Chennai, India, where some of his colleagues gave expository talks highlighting Seshadri's contributions to mathematics. This volume includes expanded texts of these talks as well as research and expository papers on geometry and representation theory. It will serve as an excellent reference for researchers and students in these areas.

In recent years topology has firmly established itself as an important part of the physicist's mathematical arsenal. Topology has profound relevance to quantum field theory-for example, topological nontrivial solutions of the classical equa tions of motion (solitons and instantons) allow the physicist to leave the frame work of perturbation theory. The significance of topology has increased even further with the development of string theory, which uses very sharp topologi cal methods-both in the study of strings, and in the pursuit of the transition to four-dimensional field theories by means of spontaneous compactification. Im portant applications of topology also occur in other areas of physics: the study of defects in condensed media, of singularities in the excitation spectrum of crystals, of the quantum Hall effect, and so on. Nowadays, a working knowledge of the basic concepts of topology is essential to quantum field theorists; there is no doubt that tomorrow this will also be true for specialists in many other areas of theoretical physics. The amount of topological information used in the physics literature is very large. Most common is homotopy theory. But other subjects also play an important role: homology theory, fibration theory (and characteristic classes in particular), and also branches of mathematics that are not directly a part of topology, but which use topological methods in an essential way: for example, the theory of indices of elliptic operators and the theory of complex manifolds."

In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that there are important connections relating three concepts -- groupoids, inverse semigroups, and operator algebras. There has been a great deal of progress in this area over the last two decades, and this book gives a careful, up-to-date and reasonably extensive account of the subject matter.

After an introductory first chapter, the second chapter presents a self-contained account of inverse semigroups, locally compact and r-discrete groupoids, and Lie groupoids. The section on Lie groupoids in chapter 2 contains a detailed discussion of groupoids particularly important in noncommutative geometry, including the holonomy groupoids of a foliated manifold and the tangent groupoid of a manifold. The representation theories of locally compact and r-discrete groupoids are developed in the third chapter, and it is shown that the C*-algebras of r-discrete groupoids are the covariance C*-algebras for inverse semigroup actions on locally compact Hausdorff spaces. A final chapter associates a universal r-discrete groupoid with any inverse semigroup. Six subsequent appendices treat topics related to those covered in the text.

The book should appeal to a wide variety of professional mathematicians and graduate students in fields such as operator algebras, analysis on groupoids, semigroup theory, and noncommutative geometry. It will also be of interest to mathematicians interested in tilings and theoretical physicists whose focus is modeling quasicrystals with tilings. An effort has been made to make the book lucid and 'user friendly"; thus it should be accessible to any reader with a basic background in measure theory and functional analysis.

This book deals with the constructive Weierstrassian approach to the theory of function spaces and various applications. The first chapter is devoted to a detailed study of quarkonial (subatomic) decompositions of functions and distributions on euclidean spaces, domains, manifolds and fractals. This approach combines the advantages of atomic and wavelet representations. It paves the way to sharp inequalities and embeddings in function spaces, spectral theory of fractal elliptic operators, and a regularity theory of some semi-linear equations. The book is self-contained, although some parts may be considered as a continuation of the author's book "Fractals and Spectra" (MMA 91). It is directed to mathematicians and (theoretical) physicists interested in the topics indicated and, in particular, how they are interrelated.

This book is based on lectures I have given to undergraduate and graduate audiences at Oxford and elsewhere over the years. My aim has been to provide an outline of both the topological theory and the uniform theory, with an emphasis on the relation between the two. Although I hope that the prospec tive specialist may find it useful as an introduction it is the non-specialist I have had more in mind in selecting the contents. Thus I have tended to avoid the ingenious examples and counterexamples which often occupy much ofthe space in books on general topology, and I have tried to keep the number of definitions down to the essential minimum. There are no particular pre requisites but I have worked on the assumption that a potential reader will already have had some experience of working with sets and functions and will also be familiar with the basic concepts of algebra and analysis. There are a number of fine books on general topology, some of which I have listed in the Select Bibliography at the end of this volume. Of course I have benefited greatly from this previous work in writing my own account. Undoubtedly the strongest influence is that of Bourbaki's Topologie Generale 2], the definitive treatment of the subject which first appeared over a genera tion ago."

Within traditional decision theory, common decision principles -- e.g. the principle to maximize utility -- generally invoke idealization; they govern ideal agents in ideal circumstances. In Realistic Decision Theory, Paul Weirch adds practicality to decision theory by formulating principles applying to nonideal agents in nonideal circumstances, such as real people coping with complex decisions. Bridging the gap between normative demands and psychological resources, Realistic Decision Theory is essential reading for theorists seeking precise normative decision principles that acknowledge the limits and difficulties of human decision-making.

This book presents problems and solutions in calculus with curvilinear coordinates. Vector analysis can be performed in different coordinate systems, an optimal system considers the symmetry of the problem in order to reduce calculatory difficulty. The book presents the material in arbitrary orthogonal coordinates, and includes the discussion of parametrization methods as well as topics such as potential theory and integral theorems. The target audience primarily comprises university teachers in engineering mathematics, but the book may also be beneficial for advanced undergraduate and graduate students alike.

This volume is dedicated to the memory of Shoshichi Kobayashi, and gathers contributions from distinguished researchers working on topics close to his research areas. The book is organized into three parts, with the first part presenting an overview of Professor Shoshichi Kobayashi's career. This is followed by two expository course lectures (the second part) on recent topics in extremal Kahler metrics and value distribution theory, which will be helpful for graduate students in mathematics interested in new topics in complex geometry and complex analysis. Lastly, the third part of the volume collects authoritative research papers on differential geometry and complex analysis. Professor Shoshichi Kobayashi was a recognized international leader in the areas of differential and complex geometry. He contributed crucial ideas that are still considered fundamental in these fields. The book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of differential geometry, complex geometry, and several complex variables geometry, as well as to graduate students in mathematics.