The ancient Greeks were the first to seriously ask for scientific explanations of the panorama of the heavens based on mathematical ideas. Ever since, mathematics has played a major role for human perception and description of the outside physical world, and in a larger perspective for comprehending the universe. This second edition pays tribute to this line of thought and takes the reader on a journey in the mathematical universe from conic sections to mathematical modelling of planetary systems.In the second edition, the four chapters in the first edition on conic sections (two chapters), isoperimetric problems for plane figures, and non-Euclidean geometry, are treated in four revised chapters with many new exercises added. In three new chapters, the reader is taken through mathematics in curves, mathematics in a Nautilus shell, and mathematics in the panorama of the heavens. In all chapters of the book, the circle plays a prominent role.This book is addressed to undergraduate and graduate students as well as researchers interested in the geometry of conic sections, including the historical background and mathematical methods used. It features selected important results, and proofs that not only proves but also 'explains' the results.

The aim of this book is to throw light on various facets of geometry through development of four geometrical themes.

The first theme is about the ellipse, the shape of the shadow east by a circle. The next, a natural continuation of the first, is a study of all three types of conic sections, the ellipse, the parabola and the hyperbola.

The third theme is about certain properties of geometrical figures related to the problem of finding the largest area that can be enclosed by a curve of given length. This problem is called the isoperimetric problem. In itself, this topic contains motivation for major parts of the curriculum in mathematics at college level and sets the stage for more advanced mathematical subjects such as functions of several variables and the calculus of variations. Here, three types of conic section are discussed briefly.

The emergence of non-Euclidean geometries in the beginning of the nineteenth century represents one of the dramatic episodes in the history of mathematics. In the last theme the non-Euclidean geometry in the Poincare disc model of the hyperbolic plane is developed.

This book presents basic elements of the theory of Hilbert spaces and operators on Hilbert spaces, culminating in a proof of the spectral theorem for compact, self-adjoint operators on separable Hilbert spaces. It exhibits a construction of the space of pth power Lebesgue integrable functions by a completion procedure with respect to a suitable norm in a space of continuous functions, including proofs of the basic inequalities of Hoelder and Minkowski. The Lp-spaces thereby emerges in direct analogy with a construction of the real numbers from the rational numbers. This allows grasping the main ideas more rapidly. Other important Banach spaces arising from function spaces and sequence spaces are also treated.In this second edition, I have expanded the material on normed vector spaces and their operators presented in Chapter 1 to include proofs of the Open Mapping Theorem, the Closed Graph Theorem and the Hahn-Banach Theorem. The material on operators between normed vector spaces is further expanded in a new Chapter 6, which presents the basic elements of the theory of Fredholm operators on general Banach spaces, not only on Hilbert spaces. This requires that we develop the theory of dual operators between Banach spaces to replace the use of adjoint operators between Hilbert spaces.With the addition of the new material on normed vector spaces and their operators, the book can serve as a general introduction to functional analysis viewed as a theory of infinite dimensional linear spaces and linear operators acting on them.

Many advanced mathematical disciplines, such as dynamical systems, calculus of variations, differential geometry and the theory of Lie groups, have a common foundation in general topology and calculus in normed vector spaces. In this book, mathematically inclined engineering students are offered an opportunity to go into some depth with fundamental notions from mathematical analysis that are not only important from a mathematical point of view but also occur frequently in the more theoretical parts of the engineering sciences. The book should also appeal to university students in mathematics and in the physical sciences.

Many applied mathematical disciplines, such as dynamical systems and optimization theory as well as classical mathematical disciplines like differential geometry and the theory of Lie groups, have a common foundation in general topology and multivariate calculus in normed vector spaces. In this book, students from both pure and applied subjects are offered an opportunity to work seriously with fundamental notions from mathematical analysis that are important not only from a mathematical point of view but also occur frequently in the theoretical parts of, for example, the engineering sciences. The book provides complete proofs of the basic results from topology and differentiability of mappings in normed vector spaces. It is a useful resource for students and researchers in mathematics and the many sciences that depend on fundamental techniques from mathematical analysis.In this second edition, the notions of compactness and sequentially compactness are developed with independent proofs for the main results. Thereby the material on compactness is apt for direct applications also in functional analysis, where the notion of sequentially compactness prevails. This edition also covers a new section on partial derivatives, and new material has been incorporated to make a more complete account of higher order derivatives in Banach spaces, including full proofs for symmetry of higher order derivatives and Taylor's formula. The exercise material has been reorganized from a collection of problem sets at the end of the book to a section at the end of each chapter with further results. Readers will find numerous new exercises at different levels of difficulty for practice.

The Nordic Summer School 1985 presented to young researchers the mathematical aspects of the ongoing research stemming from the study of field theories in physics and the differential geometry of fibre bundles in mathematics. The volume includes papers, often with original lines of attack, on twistor methods for harmonic maps, the differential geometric aspects of Yang-Mills theory, complex differential geometry, metric differential geometry and partial differential equations in differential geometry. Most of the papers are of lasting value and provide a good introduction to their subject.

This book is based on a graduate course taught by the author at the University of Maryland, USA. The lecture notes have been revised and augmented by examples. The work falls into two strands. The first two chapters develop the elementary theory of Artin Braid groups both geometrically and via homotopy theory, and discusses the link between knot theory and the combinatorics of braid groups through Markov's Theorem. The final two chapters give a detailed investigation of polynomial covering maps, which may be viewed as a homomorphism of the funamental group of the base space into the Artin braid group on n strings. This book should be of interest to both topologists and algebraists working in braid theory.

This book is based on a graduate course taught by the author at the University of Maryland. The lecture notes have been revised and augmented by examples. The first two chapters develop the elementary theory of Artin Braid groups, both geometrically and via homotopy theory, and discuss the link between knot theory and the combinatorics of braid groups through Markou's Theorem. The final two chapters give a detailed investigation of polynomial covering maps, which may be viewed as a homomorphism of the fundamental group of the base space into the Artin Braid group on n strings.