This volume deals with the theory of finite topological spaces and its relationship with the homotopy and simple homotopy theory of polyhedra. The interaction between their intrinsic combinatorial and topological structures makes finite spaces a useful tool for studying problems in Topology, Algebra and Geometry from a new perspective. In particular, the methods developed in this manuscript are used to study Quillen's conjecture on the poset of p-subgroups of a finite group and the Andrews-Curtis conjecture on the 3-deformability of contractible two-dimensional complexes. This self-contained work constitutes the first detailed exposition on the algebraic topology of finite spaces. It is intended for topologists and combinatorialists, but it is also recommended for advanced undergraduate students and graduate students with a modest knowledge of Algebraic Topology.

The main purpose of the present volume is to give a survey of some of the most significant achievements obtained by topological methods in nonlin ear analysis during the last three decades. It is intended, at least partly, as a continuation of Topological Nonlinear Analysis: Degree, Singularity and Varia tions, published in 1995. The survey articles presented are concerned with three main streams of research, that is topological degree, singularity theory and variational methods, They reflect the personal taste of the authors, all of them well known and distinguished specialists. A common feature of these articles is to start with a historical introduction and conclude with recent results, giving a dynamic picture of the state of the art on these topics. Let us mention the fact that most of the materials in this book were pre sented by the authors at the "Second Topological Analysis Workshop on Degree, Singularity and Variations: Developments of the Last 25 Years," held in June 1995 at Villa Tuscolana, Frascati, near Rome. Michele Matzeu Alfonso Vignoli Editors Topological Nonlinear Analysis II Degree, Singularity and Variations Classical Solutions for a Perturbed N-Body System Gianfausto Dell 'A ntonio O. Introduction In this review I shall consider the perturbed N-body system, i.e., a system composed of N point bodies of masses ml, ... mN, described in cartesian co ordinates by the system of equations (0.1) where f) V'k, m == - l--' m = 1, 2, 3."

Topological tools in Nonlinear Analysis had a tremendous develop ment during the last few decades. The three main streams of research in this field, Topological Degree, Singularity Theory and Variational Meth ods, have lately become impetuous rivers of scientific investigation. The process is still going on and the achievements in this area are spectacular. A most promising and rapidly developing field of research is the study of the role that symmetries play in nonlinear problems. Symmetries appear in a quite natural way in many problems in physics and in differential or symplectic geometry, such as closed orbits for autonomous Hamiltonian systems, configurations of symmetric elastic plates under pressure, Hopf Bifurcation, Taylor vortices, convective motions of fluids, oscillations of chemical reactions, etc . . . Some of these problems have been tackled recently by different techniques using equivariant versions of Degree, Singularity and Variations. The main purpose of the present volume is to give a survey of some of the most significant achievements obtained by topological methods in Nonlinear Analysis during the last two-three decades. The survey articles presented here reflect the personal taste and points of view of the authors (all of them well-known and distinguished specialists in their own fields) on the subject matter. A common feature of these papers is that of start ing with an historical introductory background of the different disciplines under consideration and climbing up to the heights of the most recent re sults."

Kuo-Tsai Chen (1923-1987) is best known to the mathematics community for his work on iterated integrals and power series connections in conjunction with his research on the cohomology of loop spaces. His work is intimately related to the theory of minimal models as developed by Dennis Sullivan, whose own work was in part inspired by the research of Chen. An outstanding and original mathematician, Chen's work falls naturally into three periods: his early work on group theory and links in the three sphere; his subsequent work on formal differential equations, which gradually developed into his most powerful and important work; and his work on iterated integrals and homotopy theory, which occupied him for the last twenty years of his life. The goal of Chen's iterated integrals program, which is a de Rham theory for path spaces, was to study the interaction of topology and analysis through path integration. The present volume is a comprehensive collection of Chen's mathematical publications preceded by an article, "The Life and Work of Kuo-Tsai Chen," placing his work and research interests into their proper context and demonstrating the power and scope of his influence.

"The art of structure is where to put the holes" Robert Le Ricolais, 1894-1977 This is a completely revised, updated and expanded version of the book titled "Optimization of Structural Topology, Shape and Material" (Bends0e 1995). The field has since then developed rapidly with many new contributions to theory, computational methods and applications. This has that a simple editing of Bends0e (1995) had to be superseded by what meant is to a large extent a completely new book, now by two authors. This work is an attempt to provide a unified presentation of methods for the optimal design of topology, shape and material for continuum and discrete structures. The emphasis is on the now matured techniques for the topology design of continuum structures and its many applications that have seen the light of the day since the first monograph appeared. The technology is now well established and designs obtained with the use of topology optimization methods are in production on a daily basis. The efficient use of materials is important in many different settings. The aerospace industry and the automotive industry, for example, apply sizing and shape optimization to the design of structures and mechanical elements.

In 1992 two successive symposia were held in Japan on algorithms, fractals and dynamical systems. The first one was Hayashibara Forum '92: International Symposium on New Bases for Engineering Science, Algorithms, Dynamics and Fractals held at Fujisaki Institute of Hayashibara Biochemical Laboratories, Inc. in Okayama during November 23-28 in which 49 mathematicians including 19 from abroad participated. They include both pure and applied mathematicians of diversified backgrounds and represented 11 coun tries. The organizing committee consisted of the following domestic members and Mike KEANE from Delft: Masayosi HATA, Shunji ITO, Yuji ITO, Teturo KAMAE (chairman), Hitoshi NAKADA, Satoshi TAKAHASHI, Yoichiro TAKAHASHI, Masaya YAMAGUTI The second one was held at the Research Institute for Mathematical Science at Kyoto University from November 30 to December 2 with emphasis on pure mathematical side in which more than 80 mathematicians participated. This volume is a partial record of the stimulating exchange of ideas and discussions which took place in these two symposia.

These lecture notes are intended as an introduction to the methods of classi?cation of holomorphic vector bundles over projective algebraic manifolds X. To be as concrete as possible we have mostly restricted ourselves to the case X = P . According to Serre (GAGA) the class- n cation of holomorphic vector bundles is equivalent to the classi?cation of algebraic vector bundles. Here we have used almost exclusively the language of analytic geometry. The book is intended for students who have a basic knowledge of analytic and (or) algebraic geometry. Some fundamental results from these ?elds are summarized at the beginning. One of the authors gave a survey in the Seminaire Bourbaki 1978 on the current state of the classi?cation of holomorphic vector bundles over P . This lecture then served as the basis for a course of lectures n in G]ottingen in the Winter Semester 78/79. The present work is an extended and up-dated exposition of that course. Because of the - troductory nature of this book we have had to leave out some di?cult topics such as the restriction theorem of Barth. As compensation we have appended to each section a paragraph in which historical remarks are made, further results indicated and unsolved problems presented. The book is divided into two chapters. Each chapter is subdivided into several sections which in turn are made up of a number of pa- graphs. Each section is preceded by a short description of its contents."

This work introduces tools, from the field of category theory, that make it possible to tackle until now unsolvable representation problems (determination of the range of a given functor). The basic idea is: if a functor lifts many objects, then it also lifts many (poset-indexed) diagrams.

Dating back to work of Berthelot, rigid cohomology appeared as a common generalization of Monsky-Washnitzer cohomology and crystalline cohomology. It is a p-adic Weil cohomology suitable for computing Zeta and L-functions for algebraic varieties on finite fields. Moreover, it is effective, in the sense that it gives algorithms to compute the number of rational points of such varieties. This is the first book to give a complete treatment of the theory, from full discussion of all the basics to descriptions of the very latest developments. Results and proofs are included that are not available elsewhere, local computations are explained, and many worked examples are given. This accessible tract will be of interest to researchers working in arithmetic geometry, p-adic cohomology theory, and related cryptographic areas.

These notes, based on lectures delivered in Saint Flour, provide an easy introduction to the authors' 2007 Springer monograph "Random Fields and Geometry." While not as exhaustive as the full monograph, they are also less exhausting, while still covering the basic material, typically at a more intuitive and less technical level. They also cover some more recent material relating to random algebraic topology and statistical applications. The notes include an introduction to the general theory of Gaussian random fields, treating classical topics such as continuity and boundedness. This is followed by a quick review of geometry, both integral and Riemannian, with an emphasis on tube formulae, to provide the reader with the material needed to understand and use the Gaussian kinematic formula, the main result of the notes. This is followed by chapters on topological inference and random algebraic topology, both of which provide applications of the main results.

Algebraic geometry is a central subfield of mathematics in which the study of cycles is an important theme. Alexander Grothendieck taught that algebraic cycles should be considered from a motivic point of view and in recent years this topic has spurred a lot of activity. This book is one of two volumes that provide a self-contained account of the subject as it stands today. Together, the two books contain twenty-two contributions from leading figures in the field which survey the key research strands and present interesting new results. Topics discussed include: the study of algebraic cycles using Abel-Jacobi/regulator maps and normal functions; motives (Voevodsky's triangulated category of mixed motives, finite-dimensional motives); the conjectures of Bloch-Beilinson and Murre on filtrations on Chow groups and Bloch's conjecture. Researchers and students in complex algebraic geometry and arithmetic geometry will find much of interest here.

Algebraic geometry is a central subfield of mathematics in which the study of cycles is an important theme. Alexander Grothendieck taught that algebraic cycles should be considered from a motivic point of view and in recent years this topic has spurred a lot of activity. This book is one of two volumes that provide a self-contained account of the subject as it stands. Together, the two books contain twenty-two contributions from leading figures in the field which survey the key research strands and present interesting new results. Topics discussed include: the study of algebraic cycles using Abel-Jacobi/regulator maps and normal functions; motives (Voevodsky's triangulated category of mixed motives, finite-dimensional motives); the conjectures of Bloch-Beilinson and Murre on filtrations on Chow groups and Bloch's conjecture. Researchers and students in complex algebraic geometry and arithmetic geometry will find much of interest here.

Als mehrbandiges Nachschlagewerk ist das Springer-Handbuch der Mathematik in erster Linie fur wissenschaftliche Bibliotheken, akademische Institutionen und Firmen sowie interessierte Individualkunden in Forschung und Lehregedacht. Es erganzt das einbandige themenumfassende Springer-Taschenbuch der Mathematik (ehemaliger Titel Teubner-Taschenbuch der Mathematik), das sich in seiner begrenzten Stoffauswahl besonders an Studierende richtet.Teil IV des Springer-Handbuchs enthalt die folgenden Zusatzkapitel zum Springer-Taschenbuch: Hohere Analysis, Lineare sowie Nichtlineare Funktionalanalysis und ihre Anwendungen, Dynamische Systeme, Nichtlineare partielle Differentialgleichungen, Mannigfaltigkeiten, Riemannsche Geometrie und allgemeine Relativitatstheorie, Liegruppen, Liealgebren und Elementarteilchen, Topologie, Krummung und Analysis.

Edward Witten once said that Elliptic Cohomology was a piece of 21st Century Mathematics that happened to fall into the 20th Century. He also likened our understanding of it to what we know of the topography of an archipelago; the peaks are beautiful and clearly connected to each other, but the exact connections are buried, as yet invisible. This very active subject has connections to algebraic topology, theoretical physics, number theory and algebraic geometry, and all these connections are represented in the sixteen papers in this volume. A variety of distinct perspectives are offered, with topics including equivariant complex elliptic cohomology, the physics of M-theory, the modular characteristics of vertex operator algebras, and higher chromatic analogues of elliptic cohomology. This is the first collection of papers on elliptic cohomology in almost twenty years and gives a broad picture of the state of the art in this important field of mathematics.

Our book is devoted to the topological fixed point theory both for single-valued and multivalued mappings in locally convex spaces, including its application to boundary value problems for ordinary differential equations (inclusions) and to (multivalued) dynamical systems. It is the first monograph dealing with the topo- logical fixed point theory in non-metric spaces. Although the theoretical material was tendentially selected with respect to ap- plications, we wished to have a self-consistent text (see the scheme below). There- fore, we supplied three appendices concerning almost-periodic and derivo-periodic single-valued {multivalued) functions and (multivalued) fractals. The last topic which is quite new can be also regarded as a contribution to the fixed point theory in hyperspaces. Nevertheless, the reader is assumed to be at least partly famil- iar in some related sections with the notions like the Bochner integral, the Au- mann multivalued integral, the Arzela-Ascoli lemma, the Gronwall inequality, the Brouwer degree, the Leray-Schauder degree, the topological (covering) dimension, the elemens of homological algebra, ...Otherwise, one can use the recommended literature. Hence, in Chapter I, the topological and analytical background is built. Then, in Chapter II (and partly already in Chapter I), topological principles necessary for applications are developed, namely: the fixed point index theory (resp. the topological degree theory), the Lefschetz and the Nielsen theories both in absolute and relative cases, periodic point theorems, topological essentiality, continuation-type theorems.

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.

Contributions by three authors treat aspects of noncommutative geometry that are related to cyclic homology. The authors give rather complete accounts of cyclic theory from different points of view. The connections between (bivariant) K-theory and cyclic theory via generalized Chern-characters are discussed in detail. Cyclic theory is the natural setting for a variety of general abstract index theorems. A survey of such index theorems is given and the concepts and ideas involved in these theorems are explained.

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.

A generalized etale cohomology theory is a theory which is represented by a presheaf of spectra on an etale site for an algebraic variety, in analogy with the way an ordinary spectrum represents a cohomology theory for spaces. Examples include etale cohomology and etale K-theory. This book gives new and complete proofs of both Thomason's descent theorem for Bott periodic K-theory and the Nisnevich descent theorem. In doing so, it exposes most of the major ideas of the homotopy theory of presheaves of spectra, and generalized etale homology theories in particular. The treatment includes, for the purpose of adequately dealing with cup product structures, a development of stable homotopy theory for n-fold spectra, which is then promoted to the level of presheaves of n-fold spectra.

This book should be of interest to all researchers working in fields related to algebraic K-theory. The techniques presented here are essentially combinatorial, and hence algebraic. An extensive background in traditional stable homotopy theory is not assumed.

------ Reviews

(...) in developing the techniques of the subject, introduces the reader to the stable homotopy category of simplicial presheaves. (...) This book provides the user with the first complete account which is sensitive enough to be compatible with the sort of closed model category necessary in "K"-theory applications (...). As an application of the techniques the author gives proofs of the descent theorems of R. W. Thomason and Y. A. Nisnevich. (...) The book concludes with a discussion of the Lichtenbaum-Quillen conjecture (an approximation to Thomason's theorem without Bott periodicity). The recent proof of this conjecture, by V. Voevodsky, (...) makes this volume compulsory reading for all who want to be au fait with current trends in algebraic "K"-theory

- Zentralblatt MATH

The presentation of these topics is highly original. The book will be very useful for any researcher interested in subjects related to algebraic "K"-theory.

- Matematica

The present volume contains the proceedings of the workshop on "Minimax Theory and Applications" that was held during the week 30 September - 6 October 1996 at the "G. Stampacchia" International School of Mathematics of the "E. Majorana" Centre for Scientific Cul ture in Erice (Italy) . The main theme of the workshop was minimax theory in its most classical meaning. That is to say, given a real-valued function f on a product space X x Y, one tries to find conditions that ensure the validity of the equality sup inf f(x, y) = inf sup f(x, y). yEY xEX xEX yEY This is not an appropriate place to enter into the technical details of the proofs of minimax theorems, or into the history of the contribu tions to the solution of this basic problem in the last 7 decades. But we do want to stress its intrinsic interest and point out that, in spite of its extremely simple formulation, it conceals a great wealth of ideas. This is clearly shown by the large variety of methods and tools that have been used to study it. The applications of minimax theory are also extremely interesting. In fact, the need for the ability to "switch quantifiers" arises in a seemingly boundless range of different situations. So, the good quality of a minimax theorem can also be judged by its applicability. We hope that this volume will offer a rather complete account of the state of the art of the subject."

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.

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.

Algebraic K-theory is a modern branch of algebra which has many important applications in fundamental areas of mathematics connected with algebra, topology, algebraic geometry, functional analysis and algebraic number theory. Methods of algebraic K-theory are actively used in algebra and related fields, achieving interesting results. This book presents the elements of algebraic K-theory, based essentially on the fundamental works of Milnor, Swan, Bass, Quillen, Karoubi, Gersten, Loday and Waldhausen. It includes all principal algebraic K-theories, connections with topological K-theory and cyclic homology, applications to the theory of monoid and polynomial algebras and in the theory of normed algebras. This volume will be of interest to graduate students and research mathematicians who want to learn more about K-theory.

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.

An introduction to the theory of orbifolds from a modern perspective, combining techniques from geometry, algebraic topology and algebraic geometry. One of the main motivations, and a major source of examples, is string theory, where orbifolds play an important role. The subject is first developed following the classical description analogous to manifold theory, after which the book branches out to include the useful description of orbifolds provided by groupoids, as well as many examples in the context of algebraic geometry. Classical invariants such as de Rham cohomology and bundle theory are developed, a careful study of orbifold morphisms is provided, and the topic of orbifold K-theory is covered. The heart of this book, however, is a detailed description of the Chen-Ruan cohomology, which introduces a new product for orbifolds and has had significant impact in recent years. The final chapter includes explicit computations for a number of interesting examples.