Every mathematician agrees that every mathematician must know some set theory; the disagreement begins in trying to decide how much is some. This book contains my answer to that question. The purpose of the book is to tell the beginning student of advanced mathematics the basic set- theoretic facts of life, and to do so with the minimum of philosophical discourse and logical formalism. The point of view throughout is that of a prospective mathematician anxious to study groups, or integrals, or manifolds. From this point of view the concepts and methods of this book are merely some of the...

"The theory is systematically developed by the axiomatic method that has, since von Neumann, dominated the general approach to linear functional analysis and that achieves here a high degree of lucidity and clarity. The presentation is never awkward or dry, as it sometimes is in other "modern" textbooks; it is as unconventional as one has come to expect from the author. The book contains about 350 well placed and instructive problems, which cover a considerable part of the subject. All in all, this is an excellent work, of equally high value for both student and teacher." Zentralblatt fur...

To the Teacher. This book is designed to introduce a student to some of the important ideas of algebraic topology by emphasizing the re- lations of these ideas with other areas of mathematics. Rather than choosing one point of view of modem topology (homotopy theory, simplicial complexes, singular theory, axiomatic homology, differ- ential topology, etc.), we concentrate our attention on concrete prob- lems in low dimensions, introducing only as much algebraic machin- ery as necessary for the problems we meet. This makes it possible to see a wider variety of important features of the subject...

One of the most effective ways to stimulate students to enjoy intellectual efforts is the scientific competition. In 1894 the Hungarian Mathematical and Physical Society introduced a mathematical competition for high school students. The success of high school competitions led the Mathematical Society to found a college level contest, named after Miklos Schweitzer. The problems of the Schweitzer Contests are proposed and selected by the most prominent Hungarian mathematicians. This book collects the problems posed in the contests between 1962 and 1991 which range from algebra, combinatorics,...

Permutation Groups form one of the oldest parts of group theory. Through the ubiquity of group actions and the concrete representations which they afford, both finite and infinite permutation groups arise in many parts of mathematics and continue to be a lively topic of research in their own right. The book begins with the basic ideas, standard constructions and important examples in the theory of permutation groups.It then develops the combinatorial and group theoretic structure of primitive groups leading to the proof of the pivotal O'Nan-Scott Theorem which links finite primitive groups...

The purpose of this book is to isolate and draw attention to the most important problem-solving techniques typically encountered in undergradu ate mathematics and to illustrate their use by interesting examples and problems not easily found in other sources. Each section features a single idea, the power and versatility of which is demonstrated in the examples and reinforced in the problems. The book serves as an introduction and guide to the problems literature (e.g., as found in the problems sections of undergraduate mathematics journals) and as an easily accessed reference of essential...

The main purpose of this book is to give a systematic treatment of singular homology and cohomology theory. It is in some sense a sequel to the author's previous book in this Springer-Verlag series entitled Algebraic Topology: An Introduction. This earlier book is definitely not a logical prerequisite for the present volume. However, it would certainly be advantageous for a prospective reader to have an acquaintance with some of the topics treated in that earlier volume, such as 2-dimensional manifolds and the funda- mental group. Singular homology and cohomology theory has been the subject...

This book is an introduction to information and coding theory at the graduate or advanced undergraduate level. It assumes a basic knowledge of probability and modern algebra, but is otherwise self- contained. The intent is to describe as clearly as possible the fundamental issues involved in these subjects, rather than covering all aspects in an encyclopedic fashion. The first quarter of the book is devoted to information theory, including a proof of Shannon's famous Noisy Coding Theorem. The remainder of the book is devoted to coding theory and is independent of the information theory...

Operator theory is a diverse area of mathematics which derives its impetus and motivation from several sources. It began with the study of integral equations and now includes the study of operators and collections of operators arising in various branches of physics and mechanics. The intention of this book is to discuss certain advanced topics in operator theory and to provide the necessary background for them assuming only the standard senior-first year graduate courses in general topology, measure theory, and algebra. At the end of each chapter there are source notes which suggest...