The first instances of deformation theory were given by Kodaira and Spencer for complex structures and by Gerstenhaber for associative algebras. Since then, deformation theory has been applied as a useful tool in the study of many other mathematical structures, and even today it plays an important role in many developments of modern mathematics.
This volume collects a few self-contained and peer-reviewed papers by experts which present up-to-date research topics in algebraic and motivic topology, quantum field theory, algebraic geometry, noncommutative geometry and the deformation theory...

Skill, Technology and Enlightenment: On practical Philosophy explores the problems of developing a perspective on technology and society, on the limits of enlightment, the relationship between cultural criticism and the epistemology of practical knowledge, tacit knowledge and a non-elitist conception of expertise, the role of the arts as a basis for reflection, and many other relevant topics.
The 1993 international conference in Stockholm was - among other things - part of a process of building a curriculum for an international graduate programme in the area of...

This second volume introduces the concept of shemes, reviews some commutative algebra and introduces projective schemes. The finiteness theorem for coherent sheaves is proved, here again the techniques of homological algebra and sheaf cohomology are needed. In the last two chapters, projective curves over an arbitrary ground field are discussed, the theory of Jacobians is developed, and the existence of the Picard scheme is proved.
Finally, the author gives some outlook into further developments- for instance etale cohomology- and states some fundamental theorems.
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This book and the following second volume is an introduction into modern algebraic geometry. In the first volume the methods of homological algebra, theory of sheaves, and sheaf cohomology are developed. These methods are indispensable for modern algebraic geometry, but they are also fundamental for other branches of mathematics and of great interest in their own.
In the last chapter of volume I these concepts are applied to the theory of compact Riemann surfaces. In this chapter the author makes clear how influential the ideas of Abel, Riemann and Jacobi were and that many of the modern...

Quantum cohomology, the theory of Frobenius manifolds and the relations to integrable systems are flourishing areas since the early 90's.
An activity was organized at the Max-Planck-Institute for Mathematics in Bonn, with the purpose of bringing together the main experts in these areas. This volume originates from this activity and presents the state of the art in the subject.

This book was planned as an introduction to a vast area, where many contri butions have been made in recent years. The choice of material is based on my understanding of the role of Lie groups in complex analysis. On the one hand, they appear as the automorphism groups of certain complex spaces, e. g., bounded domains in en or compact spaces, and are therefore important as being one of their invariants. On the other hand, complex Lie groups and, more generally, homoge neous complex manifolds, serve as a proving ground, where it is often possible to accomplish a task and get an explicit...

The aim of this book is to put together all the results that are known about the existence of formal, holomorphic and singular solutions of singular non linear partial differential equations. We study the existence of formal power series solutions, holomorphic solutions, and singular solutions of singular non linear partial differential equations. In the first chapter, we introduce operators with regular singularities in the one variable case and we give a new simple proof of the classical Maillet's theorem for algebraic differential equations. In chapter 2, we extend this theory to operators...

This book consists almost entirely of papers delivered at the Seminar on partial differential equations held at Max-Planck-Institut in the spring of 1984. They give an insight into important recent research activities. Some further developments are also included.

This volume contains the Proceedings of the International Workshop "Complex Analysis," which was held from February 12-16, 1990, in Wuppertal (Germany) in honour of H. Grauert, one of the most creative mathematicians in Complex Analysis of this century. In complete accordance with the width of the work of Grauert the book contains research notes and longer articles of many important mathematicians from all areas of Complex Analysis (Altogether there a re 49 articles in the volume). Some of the main subjects are: Cau chy-Riemann Equations with estimates, q-convexity, CR structures, deformation...