Exploring the full scope of differential topology, this comprehensive account of geometric techniques for studying the topology of smooth manifolds offers a wide perspective on the field. Building up from first principles, concepts of manifolds are introduced, supplemented by thorough appendices giving background on topology and homotopy theory. Deep results are then developed from these foundations through in-depth treatments of the notions of general position and transversality, proper actions of Lie groups, handles (up to the h-cobordism theorem), immersions and embeddings, concluding with the surgery procedure and cobordism theory. Fully illustrated and rigorous in its approach, little prior knowledge is assumed, and yet growing complexity is instilled throughout. This structure gives advanced students and researchers an accessible route into the wide-ranging field of differential topology.

The biennial meetings at Sao Carlos have helped create a worldwide community of experts and young researchers working on singularity theory, with a special focus on applications to a wide variety of topics in both pure and applied mathematics. The tenth meeting, celebrating the 60th birthdays of Terence Gaffney and Maria Aparecida Soares Ruas, was a special occasion attracting the best known names in the area. This volume contains contributions by the attendees, including three articles written or co-authored by Gaffney himself, and survey articles on the existence of Milnor fibrations, global classifications and graphs, pairs of foliations on surfaces, and Gaffney's work on equisingularity.

Even the simplest singularities of planar curves, e.g. where the curve crosses itself, or where it forms a cusp, are best understood in terms of complex numbers. The full treatment uses techniques from algebra, algebraic geometry, complex analysis and topology and makes an attractive chapter of mathematics, which can be used as an introduction to any of these topics, or to singularity theory in higher dimensions. This book is designed as an introduction for graduate students and draws on the author's experience of teaching MSc courses; moreover, by synthesising different perspectives, he gives a novel view of the subject, and a number of new results.

Singularities arise naturally in a huge number of different areas of mathematics and science. As a consequence, singularity theory lies at the crossroads of paths that connect many of the most important areas of applications of mathematics with some of its most abstract regions. The main goal in most problems of singularity theory is to understand the dependence of some objects of analysis, geometry, physics, or other science (functions, varieties, mappings, vector or tensor fields, differential equations, models, etc.) on parameters. The articles collected here can be grouped under three headings. (A) Singularities of real maps; (B) Singular complex variables; and (C) Singularities of homomorphic maps.

Singularities arise naturally in a huge number of different areas of mathematics and science. As a consequence, singularity theory lies at the crossroads of paths that connect many of the most important areas of applications of mathematics with some of its most abstract regions. The main goal in most problems of singularity theory is to understand the dependence of some objects of analysis, geometry, physics, or other science (functions, varieties, mappings, vector or tensor fields, differential equations, models, etc.) on parameters. The articles collected here can be grouped under three headings. (A) Singularities of real maps; (B) Singular complex variables; and (C) Singularities of homomorphic maps.

In 1977 several eminent mathematicians were invited to Durham to present papers at a short conference on homological and combinatorial techniques in group theory. The lectures, published here, aimed at presenting in a unified way new developments in the area. Group theory is approached from a geometrical viewpoint and much of the material has not previously been published. The various ways in which topological ideas can be used in group theory are also brought together. The volume concludes with an extensive set of problems, ranging from explicit questions demanding detailed calculation to fundamental questions motivating research in the area. These lectures will be of interest mainly to researchers in pure mathematics but will also prove useful in connection with relevant postgraduate courses.

Even the simplest singularities of planar curves, e.g. where the curve crosses itself, or where it forms a cusp, are best understood in terms of complex numbers. The full treatment uses techniques from algebra, algebraic geometry, complex analysis and topology and makes an attractive chapter of mathematics, which can be used as an introduction to any of these topics, or to singularity theory in higher dimensions. This book is designed as an introduction for graduate students and draws on the author's experience of teaching MSc courses; moreover, by synthesising different perspectives, he gives a novel view of the subject, and a number of new results.

The publication of this book in 1970 marked the culmination of a particularly exciting period in the history of the topology of manifolds. The world of high-dimensional manifolds had been opened up to the classification methods of algebraic topology by Thom's work in 1952 on transversality and cobordism, the signature theorem of Hirzebruch in 1954, and by the discovery of exotic spheres by Milnor in 1956. In the 1960s, there had been an explosive growth of interest in the surgery method of understanding the homotopy types of manifolds (initially in the differentiable category), including results such as the $h$-cobordism theory of Smale (1960), the classification of exotic spheres by Kervaire and Milnor (1962), Browder's converse to the Hirzebruch signature theorem for the existence of a manifold in a simply connected homotopy type (1962).It also includes the $s$-cobordism theorem of Barden, Mazur, and Stallings (1964), Novikov's proof of the topological invariance of the rational Pontrjagin classes of differentiable manifolds (1965), the fibering theorems of Browder and Levine (1966) and Farrell (1967), Sullivan's exact sequence for the set of manifold structures within a simply connected homotopy type (1966), Casson and Sullivan's disproof of the Hauptvermutung for piecewise linear manifolds (1967), Wall's classification of homotopy tori (1969), and Kirby and Siebenmann's classification theory of topological manifolds (1970). The original edition of the book fulfilled five purposes by providing: a coherent framework for relating the homotopy theory of manifolds to the algebraic theory of quadratic forms, unifying many of the previous results; a surgery obstruction theory for manifolds with arbitrary fundamental group, including the exact sequence for the set of manifold structures within a homotopy type, and many computations; the extension of surgery theory from the differentiable and piecewise linear categories to the topological category; a survey of most of the activity in surgery up to 1970; and, a setting for the subsequent development and applications of the surgery classification of manifolds. This new edition of this classic book is supplemented by notes on subsequent developments. References have been updated and numerous commentaries have been added. The volume remains the single most important book on surgery theory.