The school, the book This book is based on lectures given by the authors of the various chapters in a three week long CIMPA summer school, held in Sophia-Antipolis (near Nice) in July 1992. The first week was devoted to the basics of symplectic and Riemannian geometry (Banyaga, Audin, Lafontaine, Gauduchon), the second was the technical one (Pansu, Muller, Duval, Lalonde and Sikorav). The final week saw the conclusion ofthe school (mainly McDuffand Polterovich, with complementary lectures by Lafontaine, Audin and Sikorav). Globally, the chapters here reflect what happened there. Locally, we have tried to reorganise some ofthe material to make the book more coherent. Hence, for instance, the collective (Audin, Lalonde, Polterovich) chapter on Lagrangian submanifolds and the appendices added to some of the chapters. Duval was not able to write up his lectures, so that genuine complex analysis will not appear in the book, although it is a very current tool in symplectic and contact geometry (and conversely). Hamiltonian systems and variational methods were the subject of some of Sikorav's talks, which he also was not able to write up. On the other hand, F. Labourie, who could not be at the school, wrote a chapter on pseudo-holomorphic curves in Riemannian geometry.

This book is an introduction to differential manifolds. It gives solid preliminaries for more advanced topics: Riemannian manifolds, differential topology, Lie theory. It presupposes little background: the reader is only expected to master basic differential calculus, and a little point-set topology. The book covers the main topics of differential geometry: manifolds, tangent space, vector fields, differential forms, Lie groups, and a few more sophisticated topics such as de Rham cohomology, degree theory and the Gauss-Bonnet theorem for surfaces. Its ambition is to give solid foundations. In particular, the introduction of "abstract" notions such as manifolds or differential forms is motivated via questions and examples from mathematics or theoretical physics. More than 150 exercises, some of them easy and classical, some others more sophisticated, will help the beginner as well as the more expert reader. Solutions are provided for most of them. The book should be of interest to various readers: undergraduate and graduate students for a first contact to differential manifolds, mathematicians from other fields and physicists who wish to acquire some feeling about this beautiful theory. The original French text Introduction aux varietes differentielles has been a best-seller in its category in France for many years. Jacques Lafontaine was successively assistant Professor at Paris Diderot University and Professor at the University of Montpellier, where he is presently emeritus. His main research interests are Riemannian and pseudo-Riemannian geometry, including some aspects of mathematical relativity. Besides his personal research articles, he was involved in several textbooks and research monographs.

This book is an introduction to differential manifolds. It gives solid preliminaries for more advanced topics: Riemannian manifolds, differential topology, Lie theory. It presupposes little background: the reader is only expected to master basic differential calculus, and a little point-set topology. The book covers the main topics of differential geometry: manifolds, tangent space, vector fields, differential forms, Lie groups, and a few more sophisticated topics such as de Rham cohomology, degree theory and the Gauss-Bonnet theorem for surfaces. Its ambition is to give solid foundations. In particular, the introduction of "abstract" notions such as manifolds or differential forms is motivated via questions and examples from mathematics or theoretical physics. More than 150 exercises, some of them easy and classical, some others more sophisticated, will help the beginner as well as the more expert reader. Solutions are provided for most of them. The book should be of interest to various readers: undergraduate and graduate students for a first contact to differential manifolds, mathematicians from other fields and physicists who wish to acquire some feeling about this beautiful theory. The original French text Introduction aux varietes differentielles has been a best-seller in its category in France for many years. Jacques Lafontaine was successively assistant Professor at Paris Diderot University and Professor at the University of Montpellier, where he is presently emeritus. His main research interests are Riemannian and pseudo-Riemannian geometry, including some aspects of mathematical relativity. Besides his personal research articles, he was involved in several textbooks and research monographs.

This book covers the topics of differential manifolds, Riemannian metrics, connections, geodesics and curvature, with special emphasis on the intrinsic features of the subject. It treats in detail classical results on the relations between curvature and topology. The book features numerous exercises with full solutions and a series of detailed examples are picked up repeatedly to illustrate each new definition or property introduced.

The school, the book This book is based on lectures given by the authors of the various chapters in a three week long CIMPA summer school, held in Sophia-Antipolis (near Nice) in July 1992. The first week was devoted to the basics of symplectic and Riemannian geometry (Banyaga, Audin, Lafontaine, Gauduchon), the second was the technical one (Pansu, Muller, Duval, Lalonde and Sikorav). The final week saw the conclusion ofthe school (mainly McDuffand Polterovich, with complementary lectures by Lafontaine, Audin and Sikorav). Globally, the chapters here reflect what happened there. Locally, we have tried to reorganise some ofthe material to make the book more coherent. Hence, for instance, the collective (Audin, Lalonde, Polterovich) chapter on Lagrangian submanifolds and the appendices added to some of the chapters. Duval was not able to write up his lectures, so that genuine complex analysis will not appear in the book, although it is a very current tool in symplectic and contact geometry (and conversely). Hamiltonian systems and variational methods were the subject of some of Sikorav's talks, which he also was not able to write up. On the other hand, F. Labourie, who could not be at the school, wrote a chapter on pseudo-holomorphic curves in Riemannian geometry.

This book is an English translation of the famous "Green Book" by Lafontaine and Pansu (1979). It has been enriched and expanded with new material to reflect recent progress. Additionally, four appendices, by Gromov on Levy's inequality, by Pansu on "quasiconvex" domains, by Katz on systoles of Riemannian manifolds, and by Semmes overviewing analysis on metric spaces with measures, as well as an extensive bibliography and index round out this unique and beautiful book.