Researchers, teachers and graduate students in algebra and topology--familiar with the very basic notions of category theory--will welcome this categorical introduction to some of the key areas of modern mathematics, without being forced to study category theory. Rather, each of the eight largely independent chapters analyzes a particular subject, revealing the power and applicability of the categorical foundations in each case.

Our motivation for gathering the material for this book over aperiod of seven years has been to unify and simplify ideas wh ich appeared in a sizable number of re search articles during the past two decades. More specifically, it has been our aim to provide the categorical foundations for extensive work that was published on the epimorphism- and cowellpoweredness problem, predominantly for categories of topological spaces. In doing so we found the categorical not ion of closure operators interesting enough to be studied for its own sake, as it unifies and describes other significant...