Towards a Theory of Geometric Graphs

ISBN-13: 9780821834848 / Angielski / Miękka / 2004

Opis

The early development of graph theory was heavily motivated and influenced by topological and geometric themes, such as the Konigsberg Bridge Problem, Euler's Polyhedral Formula, or Kuratowski's characterization of planar graphs. In 1936, when Denes Konig published his classical Theory of Finite and Infinite Graphs, the first book ever written on the subject, he stressed this connection by adding the subtitle Combinatorial Topology of Systems of Segments. He wanted to emphasize that the subject of his investigations was very concrete: planar figures consisting of points connected by straight-line segments. However, in the second half of the twentieth century, graph theoretical research took an interesting turn. In the most popular and most rapidly growing areas (the theory of random graphs, Ramsey theory, extremal graph theory, algebraic graph theory, etc.), graphs were considered as abstract binary relations rather than geometric objects. Many of the powerful techniques developed in these fields ha In the spirit of Konig, geometric graph theory focuses on combinatorial and geometric properties of graphs drawn in the plane by straight-line edges (or more generally, by edges represe