Paul Erdos was one of the most influential mathematicians of the twentieth century, whose work in number theory, combinatorics, set theory, analysis, and other branches of mathematics has determined the development of large areas of these fields. In 1999, a conference was organized to survey his work, his contributions to mathematics, and the far-reaching impact of his work on many branches of mathematics. On the 100th anniversary of his birth, this volume undertakes the almost impossible task to describe the ways in which problems raised by him and topics initiated by him (indeed, whole branches of mathematics) continue to flourish. Written by outstanding researchers in these areas, these papers include extensive surveys of classical results as well as of new developments."

Additive combinatorics is a relatively recent term coined to comprehend the developments of the more classical additive number theory, mainly focussed on problems related to the addition of integers. Some classical problems like the Waring problem on the sum of k-th powers or the Goldbach conjecture are genuine examples of the original questions addressed in the area. One of the features of contemporary additive combinatorics is the interplay of a great variety of mathematical techniques, including combinatorics, harmonic analysis, convex geometry, graph theory, probability theory, algebraic geometry or ergodic theory.

This book gathers the contributions of many of the leading researchers in the area and is divided into three parts. The two first parts correspond to the material of the main courses delivered, Additive combinatorics and non-unique factorizations, by Alfred Geroldinger, and Sumsets and structure, by Imre Z. Ruzsa. The third part collects the notes of most of the seminars which accompanied the main courses, and which cover a reasonably large part of the methods, techniques and problems of contemporary additive combinatorics.