This account of the History of General Topology has grown out of the special session on this topic at the American Mathematical Society meeting in San Anto- nio, Texas, 1993. It was there that the idea grew to publish a book on the historical development of General Topology. Moreover it was felt that it was important to undertake this project while topologists who knew some of the early researchers were still active. Since the first paper by Frechet, "Generalisation d'un theoreme de Weier- strass", C.R.Acad. Sci. 139, 1904, 848-849, and Hausdorff's classic book, "GrundZiige der Mengenlehre", Leipzig, 1914, there have been numerous devel- opments in a multitude of directions and there have been many interactions with a great number of other mathematical fields. We have tried to cover as many of these as possible. Most contributions concern either individual topologists, specific schools, specific periods, specific topics or a combination of these.

Contents: Introduction. - Fundamental Concepts. - Topological Vector Spaces.- The Quotient Topology. - Completion of Metric Spaces. - Homotopy. - The Two Countability Axioms. - CW-Complexes. - Construction of Continuous Functions on Topological Spaces. - Covering Spaces. - The Theorem of Tychonoff. - Set Theory (by T. Br|cker). - References. - Table of Symbols. -Index.

This text, the first of two volumes, provides a comprehensive and self-contained introduction to a wide range of fundamental results from ergodic theory and geometric measure theory. Topics covered include: finite and infinite abstract ergodic theory, Young's towers, measure-theoretic Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy, thermodynamics formalism, geometric function theory, various kinds of conformal measures, conformal graph directed Markov systems and iterated functions systems, semi-local dynamics of analytic functions, and nice sets. Many examples are included, along with detailed explanations of essential concepts and full proofs, in what is sure to be an indispensable reference for both researchers and graduate students.

This text, the second of two volumes, builds on the foundational material on ergodic theory and geometric measure theory provided in Volume I, and applies all the techniques discussed to describe the beautiful and rich dynamics of elliptic functions. The text begins with an introduction to topological dynamics of transcendental meromorphic functions, before progressing to elliptic functions, discussing at length their classical properties, measurable dynamics and fractal geometry. The authors then look in depth at compactly non-recurrent elliptic functions. Much of this material is appearing for the first time in book or paper form. Both senior and junior researchers working in ergodic theory and dynamical systems will appreciate what is sure to be an indispensable reference.

The main topic of this work is the study of general complexes of differential operators between sections of vector bundles. Although the global situation and the local one are often similar in content, the invariant language permits the simplification of the notation and more clearly reveals the algebraic structure of some questions. Recent developments in the theory of complexes of differential operators are dealt with to some degree: formal theory; existence theory; global solvability problem; overdetermined boundary problems; generalized Lefschetz theory of fixed points; and qualitative theory of solutions of overdetermined systems. Considerable attention is paid to the theory of functions of several complex variables. Examples and exercises are included.

The moduli space Mg of curves of fixed genus g - that is, the algebraic variety that parametrizes all curves of genus g - is one of the most intriguing objects of study in algebraic geometry these days. Its appeal results not only from its beautiful mathematical structure but also from recent developments in theoretical physics, in particular in conformal field theory.

This text on contact topology is a comprehensive introduction to the subject, including recent striking applications in geometric and differential topology: Eliashberg's proof of Cerf's theorem via the classification of tight contact structures on the 3-sphere, and the Kronheimer-Mrowka proof of property P for knots via symplectic fillings of contact 3-manifolds. Starting with the basic differential topology of contact manifolds, all aspects of 3-dimensional contact manifolds are treated in this book. One notable feature is a detailed exposition of Eliashberg's classification of overtwisted contact structures. Later chapters also deal with higher-dimensional contact topology. Here the focus is on contact surgery, but other constructions of contact manifolds are described, such as open books or fibre connected sums. This book serves both as a self-contained introduction to the subject for advanced graduate students and as a reference for researchers.

This book covers analysis on fractals, a developing area of mathematics which focuses on the dynamical aspects of fractals, such as heat diffusion on fractals and the vibration of a material with fractal structure. The book provides a self-contained introduction to the subject, starting from the basic geometry of self-similar sets and going on to discuss recent results, including the properties of eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the Laplacians, and the asymptotical behaviors of heat kernels on self-similar sets. Requiring only a basic knowledge of advanced analysis, general topology and measure theory, this book will be of value to graduate students and researchers in analysis and probability theory. It will also be useful as a supplementary text for graduate courses covering fractals.

Topological K-theory is a key tool in topology, differential geometry and index theory, yet this is the first contemporary introduction for graduate students new to the subject. No background in algebraic topology is assumed; the reader need only have taken the standard first courses in real analysis, abstract algebra, and point-set topology. The book begins with a detailed discussion of vector bundles and related algebraic notions, followed by the definition of K-theory and proofs of the most important theorems in the subject, such as the Bott periodicity theorem and the Thom isomorphism theorem. The multiplicative structure of K-theory and the Adams operations are also discussed and the final chapter details the construction and computation of characteristic classes. With every important aspect of the topic covered, and exercises at the end of each chapter, this is the definitive book for a first course in topological K-theory.

For many, modern functional analysis dates back to Banach's book [Ba32]. Here, such powerful results as the Hahn-Banach theorem, the open-mapping theorem and the uniform boundedness principle were developed in the setting of complete normed and complete metrizable spaces. When analysts realized the power and applicability of these methods, they sought to generalize the concept of a metric space and to broaden the scope of these theorems. Topological methods had been generally available since the appearance of Hausdorff's book in 1914. So it is surprising that it took so long to recognize that they could provide the means for this generalization. Indeed, the theory of topo- logical vector spaces was developed systematically only after 1950 by a great many different people, induding Bourbaki, Dieudonne, Grothendieck, Kothe, Mackey, Schwartz and Treves. The resulting body of work produced a whole new area of mathematics and generalized Banach's results. One of the great successes here was the development of the theory of distributions. While the not ion of a convergent sequence is very old, that of a convergent fil- ter dates back only to Cartan [Ca]. And while sequential convergence structures date back to Frechet [Fr], filter convergence structures are much more recent: [Ch], [Ko] and [Fi]. Initially, convergence spaces and convergence vector spaces were used by [Ko], [Wl], [Ba], [Ke64], [Ke65], [Ke74], [FB] and in particular [Bz] for topology and analysis.

This monograph provides an introduction to the theory of topologies defined on the closed subsets of a metric space, and on the closed convex subsets of a normed linear space as well. A unifying theme is the relationship between topology and set convergence on the one hand, and set functionals on the other. The text includes for the first time anywhere an exposition of three topologies that over the past ten years have become fundamental tools in optimization, one-sided analysis, convex analysis, and the theory of multifunctions: the Wijsman topology, the Attouch--Wets topology, and the slice topology. Particular attention is given to topologies on lower semicontinuous functions, especially lower semicontinuous convex functions, as associated with their epigraphs. The interplay between convex duality and topology is carefully considered and a chapter on set-valued functions is included. The book contains over 350 exercises and is suitable as a graduate text. This book is of interest to those working in general topology, set-valued analysis, geometric functional analysis, optimization, convex analysis and mathematical economics.

Shape theory is an extension of homotopy theory from the realm of CW-complexes to arbitrary spaces. Besides applications in topology, it has interesting applications in various other areas of mathematics, especially in dynamical systems and C*-algebras. Strong shape is a refinement of ordinary shape with distinct advantages over the latter. Strong homology generalizes Steenrod homology and is an invariant of strong shape. The book gives a detailed account based on approximation of spaces by polyhedra (ANR's) using the technique of inverse systems. It is intended for researchers and graduate students. Special care is devoted to motivation and bibliographic notes.

This account of the History of General Topology has grown out of the special session on this topic at the American Mathematical Society meeting in San Anto- nio, Texas, 1993. It was there that the idea grew to publish a book on the historical development of General Topology. Moreover it was felt that it was important to undertake this project while topologists who knew some of the early researchers were still active. Since the first paper by Frechet, "Generalisation d'un theoreme de Weier- strass", C.R. Acad. Sci. 139, 1904, 848-849, and Hausdorff's classic book, "Grundziige der Mengenlehre", Leipzig, 1914, there have been numerous de- velopments in a multitude of directions and there have been many interactions with a great number of other mathematical fields. We have tried to cover as many of these as possible. Most contributions concern either individual topologists, specific schools, specific periods, specific topics or a combination of these.

In Chapter 6, we describe the concept of braid equivalence from the topological point of view. This will lead us to a new concept braid homotopy that is discussed fully in the next chapter. As just mentioned, in Chapter 7, we shall discuss the difference between braid equivalence and braid homotopy. Also in this chapter, we define a homotopy braid invariant that turns out to be the so-called Milnor number. Chapter 8 is a quick review of knot theory, including Alexander's theorem. While, Chapters 9 is devoted to Markov's theorem, which allows the application of this theory to other fields. This was one of the motivations Artin had in mind when he began studying braid theory. In Chapter 10, we discuss the primary applications of braid theory to knot theory, including the introduction of the most important invariants of knot theory, the Alexander polynomial and the Jones polynomial. In Chapter 11, motivated by Dirac's string problem, the ordinary braid group is generalized to the braid groups of various surfaces. We discuss these groups from an intuitive and diagrammatic point of view. In the last short chapter 12, we present without proof one theorem, due to Gorin and Lin [GoL] , that is a surprising application of braid theory to the theory of algebraic equations.

Each undergraduate course of algebra begins with basic notions and results concerning groups, rings, modules and linear algebra. That is, it begins with simple notions and simple results. Our intention was to provide a collection of exercises which cover only the easy part of ring theory, what we have named the "Basics of Ring Theory." This seems to be the part each student or beginner in ring theory (or even algebra) should know - but surely trying to solve as many of these exercises as possible independently. As difficult (or impossible) as this may seem, we have made every effort to avoid modules, lattices and field extensions in this collection and to remain in the ring area as much as possible. A brief look at the bibliography obviously shows that we don't claim much originality (one could name this the folklore of ring theory) for the statements of the exercises we have chosen (but this was a difficult task: indeed, the 28 titles contain approximatively 15.000 problems and our collection contains only 346). The real value of our book is the part which contains all the solutions of these exercises. We have tried to draw up these solutions as detailed as possible, so that each beginner can progress without skilled help. The book is divided in two parts each consisting of seventeen chapters, the first part containing the exercises and the second part the solutions.

This book grew out of the work developed at the University of Warwick, under the supervision of Ian Stewart, which formed the core of my Ph.D. Thesis. Most of the results described were obtained in joint work with Ian; as usual under these circumstances, many have been published in research journals over the last two years. Part of Chapter 3 was also joint work with Peter Ashwin. I would like to stress that these were true collaborations. We worked together at all stages; it is meaningless to try to identify which idea originated from whom. While preparing this book, however, I felt that a mere description of the results would not be fitting. First of all, a book is aimed at a wider audience than papers in research journals. More importantly, the work should assume as little as possible, and it should be brought to a form which is pleasurable, not painful, to read.

Topology as a subject, in our opinion, plays a central role in university education. It is not really possible to design courses in differential geometry, mathematical analysis, differential equations, mechanics, functional analysis that correspond to the temporary state of these disciplines without involving topological concepts. Therefore, it is essential to acquaint students with topo logical research methods already in the first university courses. This textbook is one possible version of an introductory course in topo logy and elements of differential geometry, and it absolutely reflects both the authors' personal preferences and experience as lecturers and researchers. It deals with those areas of topology and geometry that are most closely related to fundamental courses in general mathematics. The educational material leaves a lecturer a free choice in designing his own course or his own seminar. We draw attention to a number of particularities in our book. The first chap ter, according to the authors' intention, should acquaint readers with topolo gical problems and concepts which arise from problems in geometry, analysis, and physics. Here, general topology (Ch. 2) is presented by introducing con structions, for example, related to the concept of quotient spaces, much earlier than various other notions of general topology thus making it possible for students to study important examples of manifolds (two-dimensional surfaces, projective spaces, orbit spaces, etc.) as topological spaces, immediately."

A NATO Advanced Study Institute entitled "Algebraic K-theory and Algebraic Topology" was held at Chateau Lake Louise, Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada from December 12 to December 16 of 1991. This book is the volume of proceedings for this meeting. The papers that appear here are representative of most of the lectures that were given at the conference, and therefore present a "snapshot" of the state ofthe K-theoretic art at the end of 1991. The underlying objective of the meeting was to discuss recent work related to the Lichtenbaum-Quillen complex of conjectures, fro both the algebraic and topological points of view. The papers in this volume deal with a range of topics, including motivic cohomology theories, cyclic homology, intersection homology, higher class field theory, and the former telescope conjecture. This meeting was jointly funded by grants from NATO and the National Science Foun dation in the United States. I would like to take this opportunity to thank these agencies for their support. I would also like to thank the other members of the organizing com mittee, namely Paul Goerss, Bruno Kahn and Chuck Weibel, for their help in making the conference successful. This was the second NATO Advanced Study Institute to be held in this venue; the first was in 1987. The success of both conferences owes much to the professionalism and helpfulness of the administration and staff of Chateau Lake Louise."

In the summer of 1991 the Department of Mathematics and Statistics of the Universite de Montreal was fortunate to host the NATO Advanced Study Institute "Algebras and Orders" as its 30th Seminaire de mathematiques superieures (SMS), a summer school with a long tradition and well-established reputation. This book contains the contributions of the invited speakers. Universal algebra- which established itself only in the 1930's- grew from traditional algebra (e.g., groups, modules, rings and lattices) and logic (e.g., propositional calculus, model theory and the theory of relations). It started by extending results from these fields but by now it is a well-established and dynamic discipline in its own right. One of the objectives of the ASI was to cover a broad spectrum of topics in this field, and to put in evidence the natural links to, and interactions with, boolean algebra, lattice theory, topology, graphs, relations, automata, theoretical computer science and (partial) orders. The theory of orders is a relatively young and vigorous discipline sharing certain topics as well as many researchers and meetings with universal algebra and lattice theory. W. Taylor surveyed the abstract clone theory which formalizes the process of compos ing operations (i.e., the formation of term operations) of an algebra as a special category with countably many objects, and leading naturally to the interpretation and equivalence of varieties."

This book is devoted to some results from the classical Point Set Theory and their applications to certain problems in mathematical analysis of the real line. Notice that various topics from this theory are presented in several books and surveys. From among the most important works devoted to Point Set Theory, let us first of all mention the excellent book by Oxtoby [83] in which a deep analogy between measure and category is discussed in detail. Further, an interesting general approach to problems concerning measure and category is developed in the well-known monograph by Morgan [79] where a fundamental concept of a category base is introduced and investigated. We also wish to mention that the monograph by Cichon, W";glorz and the author [19] has recently been published. In that book, certain classes of subsets of the real line are studied and various cardinal valued functions (characteristics) closely connected with those classes are investigated. Obviously, the IT-ideal of all Lebesgue measure zero subsets of the real line and the IT-ideal of all first category subsets of the same line are extensively studied in [19], and several relatively new results concerning this topic are presented. Finally, it is reasonable to notice here that some special sets of points, the so-called singular spaces, are considered in the classi

A description of the global properties of simply-connected spaces that are non-positively curved in the sense of A. D. Alexandrov, and the structure of groups which act on such spaces by isometries. The theory of these objects is developed in a manner accessible to anyone familiar with the rudiments of topology and group theory: non-trivial theorems are proved by concatenating elementary geometric arguments, and many examples are given. Part I provides an introduction to the geometry of geodesic spaces, while Part II develops the basic theory of spaces with upper curvature bounds. More specialized topics, such as complexes of groups, are covered in Part III.

Preface to the English Edition The present monograph is a revised and enlarged alternative of the author's monograph 19] which was devoted to the development of a unified approach to studying differential inclusions, whose values of the right hand sides are compact, not necessarily convex subsets of a Banach space. This approach relies on ideas and methods of modem functional analysis, general topology, the theory of multi-valued mappings and continuous selectors. Although the basic content of the previous monograph has been remained the same this monograph has been partly re-organized and the author's recent results have been added. The contents of the present book are divided into five Chapters and an Appendix. The first Chapter of the J>ook has been left without changes and deals with multi-valued differential equations generated by a differential inclusion. The second Chapter has been significantly revised and extended. Here the au thor's recent results concerning extreme continuous selectors of multi-functions with decomposable values, multi-valued selectors ofmulti-functions generated by a differential inclusion, the existence of solutions of a differential inclusion, whose right hand side has different properties of semicontinuity at different points, have been included. Some of these results made it possible to simplify schemes for proofs concerning the existence of solutions of differential inclu sions with semicontinuous right hand side a.nd to obtain new results. In this Chapter the existence of solutions of different types are considered."

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.

In recent years, the fixed point theory of Lipschitzian-type mappings has rapidly grown into an important field of study in both pure and applied mathematics. It has become one of the most essential tools in nonlinear functional analysis. This self-contained book provides the first systematic presentation of Lipschitzian-type mappings in metric and Banach spaces. The first chapter covers some basic properties of metric and Banach spaces. Geometric considerations of underlying spaces play a prominent role in developing and understanding the theory. The next two chapters provide background in terms of convexity, smoothness and geometric coefficients of Banach spaces including duality mappings and metric projection mappings. This is followed by results on existence of fixed points, approximation of fixed points by iterative methods and strong convergence theorems. The final chapter explores several applicable problems arising in related fields. This book can be used as a textbook and as a reference for graduate students, researchers and applied mathematicians working in nonlinear functional analysis, operator theory, approximations by iteration theory, convexity and related geometric topics, and best approximation theory.

This book is dedicated to the theory of continuous selections of multi valued mappings, a classical area of mathematics (as far as the formulation of its fundamental problems and methods of solutions are concerned) as well as 'J-n area which has been intensively developing in recent decades and has found various applications in general topology, theory of absolute retracts and infinite-dimensional manifolds, geometric topology, fixed-point theory, functional and convex analysis, game theory, mathematical economics, and other branches of modern mathematics. The fundamental results in this the ory were laid down in the mid 1950's by E. Michael. The book consists of (relatively independent) three parts - Part A: Theory, Part B: Results, and Part C: Applications. (We shall refer to these parts simply by their names). The target audience for the first part are students of mathematics (in their senior year or in their first year of graduate school) who wish to get familiar with the foundations of this theory. The goal of the second part is to give a comprehensive survey of the existing results on continuous selections of multivalued mappings. It is intended for specialists in this area as well as for those who have mastered the material of the first part of the book. In the third part we present important examples of applications of continuous selections. We have chosen examples which are sufficiently interesting and have played in some sense key role in the corresponding areas of mathematics."