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Different Faces of Geometry - edited by the world renowned geometers S. Donaldson, Ya. Eliashberg, and M. Gromov - presents the current state, new results, original ideas and open questions from the following important topics in modern geometry:
Amoebas and Tropical Geometry
Convex Geometry and Asymptotic Geometric Analysis
Differential Topology of 4-Manifolds
3-Dimensional Contact Geometry
Floer Homology and Low-Dimensional Topology
Kähler Geometry
Lagrangian and Special Lagrangian Submanifolds
Refined Seiberg-Witten Invariants.
These apparently diverse topics have a common feature in that they are all areas of exciting current activity. The Editors have attracted an impressive array of leading specialists to author chapters for this volume: G. Mikhalkin (USA-Canada-Russia), V.D. Milman (Israel) and A.A. Giannopoulos (Greece), C. LeBrun (USA), Ko Honda (USA), P. Ozsváth (USA) and Z. Szabó (USA), C. Simpson (France), D. Joyce (UK) and P. Seidel (USA), and S. Bauer (Germany).
"One can distinguish various themes running through the different contributions. There is some emphasis on invariants defined by elliptic equations and their applications in low-dimensional topology, symplectic and contact geometry (Bauer, Seidel, Ozsváth and Szabó). These ideas enter, more tangentially, in the articles of Joyce, Honda and LeBrun. Here and elsewhere, as well as explaining the rapid advances that have been made, the articles convey a wonderful sense of the vast areas lying beyond our current understanding.
Simpson's article emphasizes the need for interesting new constructions (in that case of Kähler and algebraic manifolds), a point which is also made by Bauer in the context of 4-manifolds and the "11/8 conjecture".
LeBrun's article gives another perspective on 4-manifold theory, via Riemannian geometry, and the challenging open questions involving the geometry of even "well-known" 4-manifolds.
There are also striking contrasts between the articles. The authors have taken different approaches: for example, the thoughtful essay of Simpson, the new research results of LeBrun and the thorough expositions with homework problems of Honda.
One can also ponder the differences in the style of mathematics. In the articles of Honda, Giannopoulos and Milman, and Mikhalkin, the "geometry" is present in a very vivid and tangible way; combining respectively with topology, analysis and algebra. The papers of Bauer and Seidel, on the other hand, makes the point that algebraic and algebro-topological abstraction (triangulated categories, spectra) can play an important role in very unexpected ways in concrete geometric problems." - From the Preface by the Editors
List of contents
Refined Seiberg-Witten Invariants.- 3-Dimensional Methods in Contact Geometry.- Asymptotic Convex Geometry Short Overview.- Singularities of Special Lagrangian Submanifolds.- Curvature Functionals, Optimal Metrics, and the Differential Topology of 4-Manifolds.- Amoebas of Algebraic Varieties and Tropical Geometry.- Heegaard Diagrams and Holomorphic Disks.- Exact Lagrangian Submanifolds in T*Sn and the Graded Kronecker Quiver.- The Construction Problem in Kähler Geometry.
About the author
Simon Donaldson gained a BA from Cambridge in 1979. In 1980 he began graduate work in Oxford, supervised by Nigel Hitchin and Sir Michael Atiyah. His PhD thesis studied mathematical aspects of Yang-Mills theory. In 1986, aged 29, he was awarded a Fields Medal and was elected to the Royal Society. He was Wallis Professor of Mathematics in Oxford between 1985 and 1998 when he moved to Imperial College London. Most of his work since has been on the interface between differential geometry and complex algebraic geometry. The recipient of numerous awards, including the Shaw Prize in 2009 with Clifford Taubes, he is also a Foreign Member of the US, French & Swedish academies. Donaldson has supervised more than 40 doctoral students, many of whom have gone on to become leading figures in research.
