The contributions in this volume summarize parts of a seminar on conformal geometry which was held at the Max-Planck-Institut fur Mathematik in Bonn during the academic year 1985/86. The intention of this seminar was to study conformal structures on mani folds from various viewpoints. The motivation to publish seminar notes grew out of the fact that in spite of the basic importance of this field to many topics of current interest (low-dimensional topology, analysis on manifolds . . . ) there seems to be no coherent introduction to conformal geometry in the literature. We have tried to make...

Foliation theory grew out of the theory of dynamical systems on manifolds and Ch. Ehresmann's connection theory on fibre bundles. Pioneer work was done between 1880 and 1940 by H. Poincare, I. Bendixson, H. Kneser, H. Whitney, and IV. Kaplan - to name a few - who all studied "regular curve families" on surfaces, and later by Ch. Ehresmann, G. Reeb, A. Haefliger and otners between 1940 and 1960. Since then the subject has developed from a collection of a few papers to a wide field of research. ~owadays, one usually distinguishes between two main branches of foliation theory, the so-called...

In this expository text we sketch some interrelations between several famous conjectures in number theory and algebraic geometry that have intrigued math ematicians for a long period of time. Starting from Fermat's Last Theorem one is naturally led to introduce L functions, the main, motivation being the calculation of class numbers. In partic ular, Kummer showed that the class numbers of cyclotomic fields play a decisive role in the corroboration of Fermat's Last Theorem for a large class of exponents. Before Kummer, Dirichlet had already successfully applied his L-functions to the proof of...

Diese Forschungsmonographie von hohem mathematischen Niveau liefert einen neuen Zugang zu den rigid-analytischen Raumen, sowie ihrer etalen Kohomologie.USP: Aus der Froschung: Zahlentheorie und Algebraische Geometrie"

This book presents in a systematic and almost self-contained way the striking analogy between classical function theory, in particular the value distribution theory of holomorphic curves in projective space, on the one hand, and important and beautiful properties of the Gauss map of minimal surfaces on the other hand. Both theories are developed in the text, including many results of recent research. The relations and analogies between them become completely clear. The book is written for interested graduate students and mathematicians, who want to become more familiar with this modern...

This is an introduction to some geometrie aspects of G-function theory. Most of the results presented here appear in print for the flrst time; hence this text is something intermediate between a standard monograph and a research artic1e; it is not a complete survey of the topic. Except for geometrie chapters (I.3.3, II, IX, X), I have tried to keep it reasonably self contained; for instance, the second part may be used as an introduction to p-adic analysis, starting from a few basic facts wh ich are recalled in IV.l.l. I have inc1uded about forty exercises, most of them giving some...

Jede komplexe Mannigfaltigkeit ist auf naturliche Weise eine differenzierbare >1annigfaltigkeit. Sei umgekehrt M eine differenzierbare Mannigfaltigkeit. Es erhebt sich die Frage, ob auf M eine komplexe Struktur existiert. Falls dies der Fall ist, besteht dasnachste Problern darin, eine Ubersicht uber "alle" komplexen Strukturen auf M zu gewinnen. Sei L(M): =Menge der Aquivalenzklassen von komplexen Strukturen auf M Menge der zu M diffeornorphen, komplexen Mannigfalt- keiten/biholornorphe Aquivalenz. Das Modulproblern, das seinen Ursprung in der Arbeit 67] von B. Riernann hat, besteht darin,...

The purpose of this book is to study plurisubharmonic and analytic functions in n using capacity theory. The case n=l has been studied for a long time and is very well understood. The theory has been generalized to mn and the results are in many cases similar to the situation in . However, these results are not so well adapted to complex analysis in several variables - they are more related to harmonic than plurihar monic functions. Capacities can be thought of as a non-linear generali zation of measures; capacities are set functions and many of the capacities considered here can be obtained...