As many readers will know, the 20th century was a time when the fields of mathematics and the sciences were seen as two separate entities. Caused by the rapid growth of the physical sciences and an increasing abstraction in mathematical research, each party, physicists and mathematicians alike, suffered a misconception; not only of the opposition's theoretical underpinning, but of how the two subjects could be intertwined and effectively utilized. One sub-discipline that played a part in the union of the two subjects is Theoretical Physics. Breaking it down further came the fundamental theories, Relativity and Quantum theory, and later on Yang-Mills theory. Other areas to emerge in this area are those derived from the works of Donaldson, Chern-Simons, Floer-Fukaya, and Seiberg-Witten. Aimed at a wide audience, Physical Topics in Mathematics demonstrates how various physical theories have played a crucial role in the developments of Mathematics and in particular, Geometric Topology. Issues are studied in great detail, and the book steadfastly covers the background of both Mathematics and Theoretical Physics in an effort to bring the reader to a deeper understanding of their interaction. Whilst the world of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics is boundless; it is not the intention of this book to cover its enormity. Instead, it seeks to lead the reader through the world of Physical Mathematics; leaving them with a choice of which realm they wish to visit next.

Features Provides an accessible introduction to mathematics in art Supports the narrative with a self-contained mathematical theory, with complete proofs of the main results (including the classification theorem for similarities) Presents hundreds of figures, illustrations, computer-generated graphics, designs, photographs, and art reproductions, mainly presented in full color Includes 21 projects and about 280 exercises, about half of which are fully solved Covers Euclidean geometry, golden section, Fibonacci numbers, symmetries, tilings, similarities, fractals, cellular automata, inversion, hyperbolic geometry, perspective drawing, Platonic and Archimedean solids, and topology New to the Second Edition New exercises, projects and artworks Revised, reorganised and expanded chapters More use of color throughout

The present volume grew out of the Heidelberg Knot Theory Semester, organized by the editors in winter 2008/09 at Heidelberg University. The contributed papers bring the reader up to date on the currently most actively pursued areas of mathematical knot theory and its applications in mathematical physics and cell biology. Both original research and survey articles are presented; numerous illustrations support the text. The book will be of great interest to researchers in topology, geometry, and mathematical physics, graduate students specializing in knot theory, and cell biologists interested in the topology of DNA strands.

This work presents some classical as well as some very recent results and techniques concerning the spectral geometry corresponding to the Laplace-Beltrami operator and the Hodge-de Rham operators. It treats many topics that are not usually dealt with in this field, such as the continuous dependence of the eigenvalues with respect to the Riemannian metric in the CINFINITY-topology, and some of their consequences, such as Uhlenbeck's genericity theorem; examples of non-isometric flat tori in all dimensions greater than or equal to four; Gordon's classical technique for constructing isospectral closed Riemannian manifolds; a detailed presentation of Sunada's technique and Pesce's approach to isospectrality; Gordon and Webb's example of non-isometric convex domains in Rn (n>=4) that are isospectral for both Dirichlet and Neumann boundary conditions; the Chanillo-TrA]ves estimate for the first positive eigenvalue of the Hodge-de Rham operator, etc. Significant applications are developed, and many open problems, references and suggestions for further reading are given. Several themes for additional research are pointed out. Audience: This volume is designed as an introductory text for mathematicians and physicists interested in global analysis, analysis on manifolds, differential geometry, linear and multilinear algebra, and matrix theory. It is accessible to readers whose background includes basic Riemannian geometry and functional analysis. These mathematical prerequisites are covered in the first two chapters, thus making the book largely self-contained.

In a broad sense design science is the grammar of a language of images rather than of words. Modem communication techniques enable us to transmit and reconstitute images without needing to know a specific verbal sequence language such as the Morse code or Hungarian. Inter national traffic signs use international image symbols which are not An image language differs specific to any particular verbal language. from a verbal one in that the latter uses a linear string of symbols, whereas the former is multidimensional. Architectural renderings commonly show projections onto three mutually perpendicular planes, or consist of cross sections at different altitudes capable of being stacked and representing different floor plans. Such renderings make it difficult to imagine buildings compris ing ramps and other features which disguise the separation between and consequently limit the creative process of the architect. floors, Analogously, we tend to analyze natural structures as if nature had used similar stacked renderings, rather than, for instance, a system of packed spheres, with the result that we fail to perceive the system of organization determining the form of such structures."

The purpose of this book is to introduce algebraic topology using the novel approach of homotopy theory, an approach with clear applications in algebraic geometry as understood by Lawson and Voevodsky. This method allows the authors to cover the material more efficiently than the more common method using homological algebra. The basic concepts of homotopy theory, such as fibrations and cofibrations, are used to construct singular homology and cohomology, as well as K-theory. Throughout the text many other fundamental concepts are introduced, including the construction of the characteristic classes of vector bundles. Although functors appear constantly throughout the text, no knowledge about category theory is expected from the reader. This book is intended for advanced undergraduates and graduate students with a basic knowledge of point set topology as well as group theory and can be used in a two semester course. Marcelo Aguilar and Carlos Prieto are Professors at the Instituto de Matemticas, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, and Samuel Gitler is a member of El Colegio Nacional and professor at the Centro de Investigacion y Estudios Avanzados del IPN.

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.

This is a monograph on fixed point theory, covering the purely metric aspects of the theory-particularly results that do not depend on any algebraic structure of the underlying space. Traditionally, a large body of metric fixed point theory has been couched in a functional analytic framework. This aspect of the theory has been written about extensively. There are four classical fixed point theorems against which metric extensions are usually checked. These are, respectively, the Banach contraction mapping principal, Nadler's well known set-valued extension of that theorem, the extension of Banach's theorem to nonexpansive mappings, and Caristi's theorem. These comparisons form a significant component of this book. This book is divided into three parts. Part I contains some aspects of the purely metric theory, especially Caristi's theorem and a few of its many extensions. There is also a discussion of nonexpansive mappings, viewed in the context of logical foundations. Part I also contains certain results in hyperconvex metric spaces and ultrametric spaces. Part II treats fixed point theory in classes of spaces which, in addition to having a metric structure, also have geometric structure. These specifically include the geodesic spaces, length spaces and CAT(0) spaces. Part III focuses on distance spaces that are not necessarily metric. These include certain distance spaces which lie strictly between the class of semimetric spaces and the class of metric spaces, in that they satisfy relaxed versions of the triangle inequality, as well as other spaces whose distance properties do not fully satisfy the metric axioms.

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.

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.

The groundbreaking results of the near past - Donaldson's result on Lef schetz pencils on symplectic manifolds and Giroux's correspondence be tween contact structures and open book decompositions - brought a top ological flavor to global symplectic and contact geometry. This topological aspect is strengthened by the existing results of Weinstein and Eliashberg (and Gompf in dimension 4) on handle attachment in the symplectic and Stein category, and by Giroux's theory of convex surfaces, enabling us to perform surgeries on contact 3-manifolds. The main objective of these notes is to provide a self-contained introduction to the theory of surgeries one can perform on contact 3-manifolds and Stein surfaces. We will adopt a very topological point of view based on handlebody theory, in particular, on Kirby calculus for 3- and 4-dimensionalmanifolds. Surgery is a constructive method by its very nature. Applying it in an intricate way one can see what can be done. These results are nicely com plemented by the results relying on gauge theory - a theory designed to prove that certain things cannot be done. We will freely apply recent results of gauge theory without a detailed introduction to these topics; we will be content with a short introduction to some forms of Seiberg-Witten theory and some discussions regarding Heegaard Floer theory in two Appendices."

This is the first volume of a three-volume introduction to modern geometry, with emphasis on applications to other areas of mathematics and theoretical physics. Topics covered include tensors and their differential calculus, the calculus of variations in one and several dimensions, and geometric field theory. This material is explained in as simple and concrete a language as possible, in a terminology acceptable to physicists. The text for the second edition has been substantially revised.

¿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

The work shows the fascination of topology- and geometry-governed properties of self-rolled micro- and nanoarchitectures. The author provides an in-depth representation of the advanced theoretical and numerical models for analyzing key effects, which underlie engineering of transport, superconducting and optical properties of micro- and nanoarchitectures.

This book presents few novel Discrete-time Sliding Mode (DSM) protocols for leader-following consensus of Discrete Multi-Agent Systems (DMASs). The protocols intend to achieve the consensus in finite time steps and also tackle the corresponding uncertainties. Based on the communication graph topology of multi-agent systems, the protocols are divided into two groups, namely (i) Fixed graph topology and (ii) Switching graph topology. The coverage begins with the design of Discrete-time Sliding Mode (DSM) protocols using Gao's reaching law and power rate reaching law for the synchronization of linear DMASs by using the exchange of information between the agents and the leader to achieve a common goal. Then, in a subsequent chapter, analysis for no. of fixed-time steps required for the leader-following consensus is presented. The book also includes chapters on the design of Discrete-time Higher-order Sliding Mode (DHSM) protocols, Event-triggered DSM protocols for the leader-following consensus of DMASs. A chapter is also included on the design of DHSM protocols for leader-following consensus of heterogeneous DMASs. Special emphasis is given to the practical implementation of each proposed DSM protocol for achieving leader-following consensus of helicopter systems, flexible joint robotic arms, and rigid joint robotic arms. This book offers a ready reference guide for graduate students and researchers working in the areas of control, automation, and communication engineering, and in particular the cooperative control of multi-agent systems. It will also benefit professional engineers working to design and implement robust controllers for power systems, autonomous vehicles, military surveillance, smartgrids/microgrids, vehicle traffic management, robotic teams, and aerial robots.

The theory and applications of infinite dimensional dynamical systems have attracted the attention of scientists for quite some time. Dynamical issues arise in equations which attempt to model phenomena that change with time, and the infinite dimensional aspects occur when forces that describe the motion depend on spatial variables. This book may serve as an entree for scholars beginning their journey into the world of dynamical systems, especially infinite dimensional spaces. The main approach involves the theory of evolutionary equations. It begins with a brief essay on the evolution of evolutionary equations and introduces the origins of the basic elements of dynamical systems, flow and semiflow.

In 1961 Smale established the generalized Poincare Conjecture in dimensions greater than or equal to 5 [129] and proceeded to prove the h-cobordism theorem [130]. This result inaugurated a major effort to classify all possible smooth and topological structures on manifolds of dimension at least 5. By the mid 1970's the main outlines of this theory were complete, and explicit answers (especially concerning simply connected manifolds) as well as general qualitative results had been obtained. As an example of such a qualitative result, a closed, simply connected manifold of dimension 2: 5 is determined up to finitely many diffeomorphism possibilities by its homotopy type and its Pontrjagin classes. There are similar results for self-diffeomorphisms, which, at least in the simply connected case, say that the group of self-diffeomorphisms of a closed manifold M of dimension at least 5 is commensurate with an arithmetic subgroup of the linear algebraic group of all automorphisms of its so-called rational minimal model which preserve the Pontrjagin classes [131]. Once the high dimensional theory was in good shape, attention shifted to the remaining, and seemingly exceptional, dimensions 3 and 4. The theory behind the results for manifolds of dimension at least 5 does not carryover to manifolds of these low dimensions, essentially because there is no longer enough room to maneuver. Thus new ideas are necessary to study manifolds of these "low" dimensions.

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.

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.

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.

This volume contains 19 articles written by speakers at the Advanced Study Institute on 'Modular representations and subgroup structure of al gebraic groups and related finite groups' held at the Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge from 23rd June to 4th July 1997. We acknowledge with gratitude the financial support given by the NATO Science Committee to enable this ASI to take place. Generous financial support was also provided by the European Union. We are also pleased to acknowledge funds given by EPSRC to the Newton Institute which were used to support the meeting. It is a pleasure to thank the Director of the Isaac Newton Institute, Professor Keith Moffatt, and the staff of the Institute for their dedicated work which did so much to further the success of the meeting. The editors wish to thank Dr. Ross Lawther and Dr. Nick Inglis most warmly for their help in the production of this volume. Dr. Lawther in particular made an invaluable contribution in preparing the volume for submission to the publishers. Finally we wish to thank the distinguished speakers at the ASI who agreed to write articles for this volume based on their lectures at the meet ing. We hope that the volume will stimulate further significant advances in the theory of algebraic groups."

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."

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."