Since the early work of Gauss and Riemann, differential geometry has grown into a vast network of ideas and approaches, encompassing local considerations such as differential invariants and jets as well as global ideas, such as Morse theory and characteristic classes. In this volume of the Encyclopaedia, the authors give a tour of the principal areas and methods of modern differential geomerty. The book is structured so that the reader may choose parts of the text to read and still take away a completed picture of some area of differential geometry. Beginning at the introductory level with curves in Euclidian space, the sections become more challenging, arriving finally at the advanced topics which form the greatest part of the book: transformation groups, the geometry of differential equations, geometric structures, the equivalence problem, the geometry of elliptic operators. Several of the topics are approaches which are now enjoying a resurgence, e.g. G-structures and contact geometry. As an overview of the major current methods of differential geometry, EMS 28 is a map of these different ideas which explains the interesting points at every stop. The authors' intention is that the reader should gain a new understanding of geometry from the process of reading this survey.

The book contains a survey of research on non-regular Riemannian geome try, carried out mainly by Soviet authors. The beginning of this direction oc curred in the works of A. D. Aleksandrov on the intrinsic geometry of convex surfaces. For an arbitrary surface F, as is known, all those concepts that can be defined and facts that can be established by measuring the lengths of curves on the surface relate to intrinsic geometry. In the case considered in differential is defined by specifying its first geometry the intrinsic geometry of a surface fundamental form. If the surface F is non-regular, then instead of this form it is convenient to use the metric PF' defined as follows. For arbitrary points X, Y E F, PF(X, Y) is the greatest lower bound of the lengths of curves on the surface F joining the points X and Y. Specification of the metric PF uniquely determines the lengths of curves on the surface, and hence its intrinsic geometry. According to what we have said, the main object of research then appears as a metric space such that any two points of it can be joined by a curve of finite length, and the distance between them is equal to the greatest lower bound of the lengths of such curves. Spaces satisfying this condition are called spaces with intrinsic metric. Next we introduce metric spaces with intrinsic metric satisfying in one form or another the condition that the curvature is bounded."

Since the early work of Gauss and Riemann, differential geometry has grown into a vast network of ideas and approaches, encompassing local considerations such as differential invariants and jets as well as global ideas, such as Morse theory and characteristic classes. In this volume of the Encyclopaedia, the authors give a tour of the principal areas and methods of modern differential geomerty. The book is structured so that the reader may choose parts of the text to read and still take away a completed picture of some area of differential geometry. Beginning at the introductory level with curves in Euclidian space, the sections become more challenging, arriving finally at the advanced topics which form the greatest part of the book: transformation groups, the geometry of differential equations, geometric structures, the equivalence problem, the geometry of elliptic operators. Several of the topics are approaches which are now enjoying a resurgence, e.g. G-structures and contact geometry. As an overview of the major current methods of differential geometry, EMS 28 is a map of these different ideas which explains the interesting points at every stop. The authors' intention is that the reader should gain a new understanding of geometry from the process of reading this survey.

This book contains two surveys on modern research into non-regular Riemannian geometry, carried out mostly by Russian mathematicians. Coverage examines two-dimensional Riemannian manifolds of bounded curvature and metric spaces whose curvature lies between two given constants. This book will be immensely useful to graduate students and researchers in geometry, in particular Riemannian geometry.