Geometric constructions have been a popular part of mathematics throughout history. The first chapter here is informal and starts from scratch, introducing all the geometric constructions from high school that have been forgotten or were never learned. The second chapter formalises Plato's game, and examines problems from antiquity such as the impossibility of trisecting an arbitrary angle. After that, variations on Plato's theme are explored: using only a ruler, a compass, toothpicks, a ruler and dividers, a marked rule, or a tomahawk, ending in a chapter on geometric constructions by paperfolding. The author writes in a charming style and nicely intersperses history and philosophy within the mathematics, teaching a little geometry and a little algebra along the way. This is as much an algebra book as it is a geometry book, yet since all the algebra and geometry needed is developed within the text, very little mathematical background is required. This text has been class tested for several semesters with a master's level class for secondary teachers.

'Subdivision' is a way of representing smooth shapes in a computer. A curve or surface (both of which contain an in?nite number of points) is described in terms of two objects. One object is a sequence of vertices, which we visualise as a polygon, for curves, or a network of vertices, which we visualise by drawing the edges or faces of the network, for surfaces. The other object is a set of rules for making denser sequences or networks. When applied repeatedly, the denser and denser sequences are claimed to converge to a limit, which is the curve or surface that we want to represent. This book focusses on curves, because the theory for that is complete enough that a book claiming that our understanding is complete is exactly what is needed to stimulate research proving that claim wrong. Also because there are already a number of good books on subdivision surfaces. The way in which the limit curve relates to the polygon, and a lot of interesting properties of the limit curve, depend on the set of rules, and this book is about how one can deduce those properties from the set of rules, and how one can then use that understanding to construct rules which give the properties that one wants.

Geometric algebra has established itself as a powerful and valuable mathematical tool for solving problems in computer science, engineering, physics, and mathematics. The articles in this volume, written by experts in various fields, reflect an interdisciplinary approach to the subject, and highlight a range of techniques and applications. Relevant ideas are introduced in a self-contained manner and only a knowledge of linear algebra and calculus is assumed.

Features and Topics:

* The mathematical foundations of geometric algebra are explored

* Applications in computational geometry include models of reflection and ray-tracing and a new and concise characterization of the crystallographic groups

* Applications in engineering include robotics, image geometry, control-pose estimation, inverse kinematics and dynamics, control and visual navigation

* Applications in physics include rigid-body dynamics, elasticity, and electromagnetism

* Chapters dedicated to quantum information theory dealing with multi-particle entanglement, MRI, and relativistic generalizations

Practitioners, professionals, and researchers working in computer science, engineering, physics, and mathematics will find a wide range of useful applications in this state-of-the-art survey and reference book. Additionally, advanced graduate students interested in geometric algebra will find the most current applications and methods discussed.

Previous publications on the generalization of the Thomae formulae to "Zn" curves have emphasized the theory's implications in mathematical physics and depended heavily on applied mathematical techniques. This book redevelops these previous results demonstrating how they can be derived directly from the basic properties of theta functions as functions on compact Riemann surfaces.

"Generalizations of Thomae's Formulafor "Zn" Curves" includes several refocused proofs developed in a generalized context that is more accessible to researchers in related mathematical fields such as algebraic geometry, complex analysis, and number theory.

This book is intended for mathematicians with an interest in complex analysis, algebraic geometry or number theory as well as physicists studying conformal field theory."

Apollonius's Conics was one of the greatest works of advanced mathematics in antiquity. The work comprised eight books, of which four have come down to us in their original Greek and three in Arabic. By the time the Arabic translations were produced, the eighth book had already been lost. In 1710, Edmond Halley, then Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford, produced an edition of the Greek text of the Conics of Books I-IV, a translation into Latin from the Arabic versions of Books V-VII, and a reconstruction of Book VIII.

The present work provides the first completeEnglish translation of Halley's reconstruction of Book VIII withsupplementary notes on the text. It also contains 1)an introduction discussing aspects of Apollonius's Conics 2) an investigation of Edmond Halley's understanding ofthe nature of his venture into ancient mathematics, and 3) anappendices giving a brief account of Apollonius's approach to conic sections and his mathematical techniques.

This book will be of interest to students and researchers interested in the history ofancientGreekmathematics and mathematics in the early modern period."

The core of this monograph is the development of tools to derive well-posedness results in very general geometric settings for elliptic differential operators. A new generation of Calderon-Zygmund theory is developed for variable coefficient singular integral operators, which turns out to be particularly versatile in dealing with boundary value problems for the Hodge-Laplacian on uniformly rectifiable subdomains of Riemannian manifolds via boundary layer methods. In addition to absolute and relative boundary conditions for differential forms, this monograph treats the Hodge-Laplacian equipped with classical Dirichlet, Neumann, Transmission, Poincare, and Robin boundary conditions in regular Semmes-Kenig-Toro domains. Lying at the intersection of partial differential equations, harmonic analysis, and differential geometry, this text is suitable for a wide range of PhD students, researchers, and professionals. Contents: Preface Introduction and Statement of Main Results Geometric Concepts and Tools Harmonic Layer Potentials Associated with the Hodge-de Rham Formalism on UR Domains Harmonic Layer Potentials Associated with the Levi-Civita Connection on UR Domains Dirichlet and Neumann Boundary Value Problems for the Hodge-Laplacian on Regular SKT Domains Fatou Theorems and Integral Representations for the Hodge-Laplacian on Regular SKT Domains Solvability of Boundary Problems for the Hodge-Laplacian in the Hodge-de Rham Formalism Additional Results and Applications Further Tools from Differential Geometry, Harmonic Analysis, Geometric Measure Theory, Functional Analysis, Partial Differential Equations, and Clifford Analysis Bibliography Index

Topics in Knot Theory is a state of the art volume which presents surveys of the field by the most famous knot theorists in the world. It also includes the most recent research work by graduate and postgraduate students. The new ideas presented cover racks, imitations, welded braids, wild braids, surgery, computer calculations and plottings, presentations of knot groups and representations of knot and link groups in permutation groups, the complex plane and/or groups of motions. For mathematicians, graduate students and scientists interested in knot theory.

The aim of this book is to construct categories of spaces which contain all the C?-manifolds, but in addition infinitesimal spaces and arbitrary function spaces. To this end, the techniques of Grothendieck toposes (and the logic inherent to them) are explained at a leisurely pace and applied. By discussing topics such as integration, cohomology and vector bundles in the new context, the adequacy of these new spaces for analysis and geometry will be illustrated and the connection to the classical approach to C?-manifolds will be explained.

The main aim of this book is to present a completely algebraic approach to the Enriques¿ classification of smooth projective surfaces defined over an algebraically closed field of arbitrary characteristic. This algebraic approach is one of the novelties of this book among the other modern textbooks devoted to this subject. Two chapters on surface singularities are also included. The book can be useful as a textbook for a graduate course on surfaces, for researchers or graduate students in algebraic geometry, as well as those mathematicians working in algebraic geometry or related fields.

This book contains a collection of fifteen articles and is dedicated to the sixtieth birthdays of Lex Renner and Mohan Putcha, the pioneers of the field of algebraic monoids. Topics presented include: structure and representation theory of reductive algebraic monoids monoid schemes and applications of monoids monoids related to Lie theory equivariant embeddings of algebraic groups constructions and properties of monoids from algebraic combinatorics endomorphism monoids induced from vector bundles Hodge-Newton decompositions of reductive monoids A portion of these articles are designed to serve as a self-contained introduction to these topics, while the remaining contributions are research articles containing previously unpublished results, which are sure to become very influential for future work. Among these, for example, the important recent work of Michel Brion and Lex Renner showing that the algebraic semigroups are strongly pi-regular.Graduate students as well as researchers working in the fields of algebraic (semi)group theory, algebraic combinatorics, and the theory of algebraic group embeddings will benefit from this unique and broad compilation of some fundamental results in (semi)group theory, algebraic group embeddings, and algebraic combinatorics merged under the umbrella of algebraic monoids.

This monograph, unique in the literature, is the first to develop a mathematical theory of gravitational lensing. The theory applies to any finite number of deflector planes and highlights the distinctions between single and multiple plane lensing. Introductory material in Parts I and II present historical highlights and the astrophysical aspects of the subject. Among the lensing topics discussed are multiple quasars, giant luminous arcs, Einstein rings, the detection of dark matter and planets with lensing, time delays and the age of the universe (Hubble's constant), microlensing of stars and quasars. The main part of the book---Part III---employs the ideas and results of singularity theory to put gravitational lensing on a rigorous mathematical foundation and solve certain key lensing problems. Results are published here for the first time. Mathematical topics discussed: Morse theory, Whitney singularity theory, Thom catastrophe theory, Mather stability theory, Arnold singularity theory, and the Euler characteristic via projectivized rotation numbers. These tools are applied to the study of stable lens systems, local and global geometry of caustics, caustic metamorphoses, multiple lensed images, lensed image magnification, magnification cross sections, and lensing by singular and nonsingular deflectors. Examples, illustrations, bibliography and index make this a suitable text for an undergraduate/graduate course, seminar, or independent thesis project on gravitational lensing. The book is also an excellent reference text for professional mathematicians, mathematical physicists, astrophysicists, and physicists.

In this book the authors study the differential geometry of varieties with degenerate Gauss maps. They use the main methods of differential geometry, namely, the methods of moving frames and exterior differential forms as well as tensor methods. By means of these methods, the authors discover the structure of varieties with degenerate Gauss maps, determine the singular points and singular varieties, find focal images and construct a classification of the varieties with degenerate Gauss maps. The authors introduce the above mentioned methods and apply them to a series of concrete problems arising in the theory of varieties with degenerate Gauss maps. What makes this book unique is the authors’ use of a systematic application of methods of projective differential geometry along with methods of the classical algebraic geometry for studying varieties with degenerate Gauss maps. This book is intended for researchers and graduate students interested in projective differential geometry and algebraic geometry and their applications. It can be used as a text for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Each author has published over 100 papers and they have each written a number of books, including Conformal Differential Geometry and Its Generalizations (Wiley 1996), Projective Differential Geometry of Submanifolds (North-Holland 1993), and Introductory Linear Algebra (Prentice-Hall 1972), which were written by them jointly.

Arakelov introduced a component at infinity in arithmetic considerations, thus giving rise to global theorems similar to those of the theory of surfaces, but in an arithmetic context over the ring of integers of a number field. The book gives an introduction to this theory, including the analogues of the Hodge Index Theorem, the Arakelov adjunction formula, and the Faltings Riemann-Roch theorem. The book is intended for second year graduate students and researchers in the field who want a systematic introduction to the subject. The residue theorem, which forms the basis for the adjunction formula, is proved by a direct method due to Kunz and Waldi. The Faltings Riemann-Roch theorem is proved without assumptions of semistability. An effort has been made to include all necessary details, and as complete references as possible, especially to needed facts of analysis for Green's functions and the Faltings metrics.

Two contributions on closely related subjects: the theory of linear algebraic groups and invariant theory, by well-known experts in the fields. The book will be very useful as a reference and research guide to graduate students and researchers in mathematics and theoretical physics.

The study of qualitative aspects of PDE's has always attracted much attention from the early beginnings. More recently, once basic issues about PDE's, such as existence, uniqueness and stability of solutions, have been understood quite well, research on topological and/or geometric properties of their solutions has become more intense. The study of these issues is attracting the interest of an increasing number of researchers and is now a broad and well-established research area, with contributions that often come from experts from disparate areas of mathematics, such as differential and convex geometry, functional analysis, calculus of variations, mathematical physics, to name a few. This volume collects a selection of original results and informative surveys by a group of international specialists in the field, analyzes new trends and techniques and aims at promoting scientific collaboration and stimulating future developments and perspectives in this very active area of research.

In the 60's, the work of Anderson, Chernavski, Kirby and Edwards showed that the group of homeomorphisms of a smooth manifold which are isotopic to the identity is a simple group. This led Smale to conjecture that the group Diff'" (M)o of cr diffeomorphisms, r ~ 1, of a smooth manifold M, with compact supports, and isotopic to the identity through compactly supported isotopies, is a simple group as well. In this monograph, we give a fairly detailed proof that DifF(M)o is a simple group. This theorem was proved by Herman in the case M is the torus rn in 1971, as a consequence of the Nash-Moser-Sergeraert implicit function theorem. Thurston showed in 1974 how Herman's result on rn implies the general theorem for any smooth manifold M. The key idea was to vision an isotopy in Diff'"(M) as a foliation on M x [0, 1]. In fact he discovered a deep connection between the local homology of the group of diffeomorphisms and the homology of the Haefliger classifying space for foliations. Thurston's paper [180] contains just a brief sketch of the proof. The details have been worked out by Mather [120], [124], [125], and the author [12]. This circle of ideas that we call the "Thurston tricks" is discussed in chapter 2. It explains how in certain groups of diffeomorphisms, perfectness leads to simplicity. In connection with these ideas, we discuss Epstein's theory [52], which we apply to contact diffeomorphisms in chapter 6.

In this book we study sprays and Finsler metrics. Roughly speaking, a spray on a manifold consists of compatible systems of second-order ordinary differential equations. A Finsler metric on a manifold is a family of norms in tangent spaces, which vary smoothly with the base point. Every Finsler metric determines a spray by its systems of geodesic equations. Thus, Finsler spaces can be viewed as special spray spaces. On the other hand, every Finsler metric defines a distance function by the length of minimial curves. Thus Finsler spaces can be viewed as regular metric spaces. Riemannian spaces are special regular metric spaces. In 1854, B. Riemann introduced the Riemann curvature for Riemannian spaces in his ground-breaking Habilitationsvortrag. Thereafter the geometry of these special regular metric spaces is named after him. Riemann also mentioned general regular metric spaces, but he thought that there were nothing new in the general case. In fact, it is technically much more difficult to deal with general regular metric spaces. For more than half century, there had been no essential progress in this direction until P. Finsler did his pioneering work in 1918. Finsler studied the variational problems of curves and surfaces in general regular metric spaces. Some difficult problems were solved by him. Since then, such regular metric spaces are called Finsler spaces. Finsler, however, did not go any further to introduce curvatures for regular metric spaces. He switched his research direction to set theory shortly after his graduation.

This book discusses the geometrical aspects of Kaluza-Klein theories. The ten chapters cover topics from the differential and Riemannian manifolds to the reduction of Einstein-Yang-Mills action. It would definitely prove interesting reading to physicists and mathematicians, theoretical and experimental.

The aim of this book is to make accessible the two important but rare works of Brook Taylor and to describe his role in the history of linear perspective. Taylor's works, Linear Perspective and New Principles on Linear Perspective, are among the most important sources in the history of the theory of perspective. This text focuses on two aspects of this history. The first is the development, starting in the beginning of the 17th century, of a mathematical theory of perspective where gifted mathematicians used their creativity to solve basic problems of perspective and simultaneously were inspired to consider more general problems in the projective geometry. Taylor was one of the key figures in this development. The second aspect concerns the problem of transmitting the knowledge gained by mathematicians to the practitioners. Although Taylor's books were mathematical rather than challenging, he was the first mathematician to succeed in making the practitioners interested in teaching the theoretical foundation of perspective. He became so important in the development that he was named "the father of modern perspective" in England. The English school of Taylor followers contained among others the painter John Kirby and Joseph Highmore and the scientist Joseph Priestley. After its translation to Italian and French in the 1750s, Taylor's work became popular on the continent.

The main purpose of this book is to show how ideas from combinatorial group theory have spread to two other areas of mathematics: the theory of Lie algebras and affine algebraic geometry. Some of these ideas, in turn, came to combinatorial group theory from low-dimensional topology at the beginning of the 20th Century. This book is divided into three fairly independent parts. Part I provides a brief exposition of several classical techniques in combinatorial group theory, namely, methods of Nielsen, Whitehead, and Tietze. Part II contains the main focus of the book. Here the authors show how the aforementioned techniques of combinatorial group theory found their way into affine algebraic geometry, a fascinating area of mathematics that studies polynomials and polynomial mappings. Part III illustrates how ideas from combinatorial group theory contributed to the theory of free algebras. The focus here is on Schreier varieties of algebras (a variety of algebras is said to be Schreier if any subalgebra of a free algebra of this variety is free in the same variety of algebras).

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 Clad in Crane Feathers' in R. Brown 'The point of a Pin'. van Gulik's The Chinese 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 us;; 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."

Computer vision and image analysis require interdisciplinary collaboration between mathematics and engineering. This book addresses the area of high-accuracy measurements of length, curvature, motion parameters and other geometrical quantities from acquired image data. It is a common problem that these measurements are incomplete or noisy, such that considerable efforts are necessary to regularise the data, to fill in missing information, and to judge the accuracy and reliability of these results. This monograph brings together contributions from researchers in computer vision, engineering and mathematics who are working in this area.

The book can be read both by specialists and graduate students in computer science, electrical engineering or mathematics who take an interest in data evaluations by approximation or interpolation, in particular data obtained in an image analysis context.

In April of 1996 an array of mathematicians converged on Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the Rotafest and Umbral Calculus Workshop, two con ferences celebrating Gian-Carlo Rota's 64th birthday. It seemed appropriate when feting one of the world's great combinatorialists to have the anniversary be a power of 2 rather than the more mundane 65. The over seventy-five par ticipants included Rota's doctoral students, coauthors, and other colleagues from more than a dozen countries. As a further testament to the breadth and depth of his influence, the lectures ranged over a wide variety of topics from invariant theory to algebraic topology. This volume is a collection of articles written in Rota's honor. Some of them were presented at the Rotafest and Umbral Workshop while others were written especially for this Festschrift. We will say a little about each paper and point out how they are connected with the mathematical contributions of Rota himself."

Geometrical Physics in Minkowski Spacetime is an overview and description of the geometry in spacetime, and aids in the creation and development of intuition in four-dimensional Minkowski space. The deepest understanding of relativity and spacetime is in terms of the geometrical absolutes, and this is what the book seeks to develop. The most interesting topics requiring special relativity are covered, including:SpacetimeVectors in SpacetimeElectromagnetismAsymptotic Momentum ConservationCovectors and Dyadics in SpacetimeEnergy Tensor Although the book is not meant for the complete beginner in special relativity, the mathematical prerequisites for the early chapters of the book are very few - linear algebra and elementary geometry (done using vectors and a scalar product). For the later chapters, multivariable calculus and ordinary differential equations are often needed.

This book gives a comprehensive account of Mori¿s Program, that is an approach to the following problem: classify all the projective varieties X in P^n over C up to isomorphism. Mori¿s Program is a fusion of the so-called Minimal Model Program and the Iitaka Program toward the biregular and/or birational classification of higher dimensional algebraic varieties. The author presents this theory in an easy and understandable way with lots of background motivation. It is the first book in this extremely important and active area of research and will become a key resource for graduate students.