Foliated spaces look locally like products, but their global structure is generally not a product, and tangential differential operators are correspondingly more complex. In the 1980s, Alain Connes founded what is now known as noncommutative geometry. One of the first results was his generalization of the Atiyah-Singer index theorem to compute the analytic index associated with a tangential (pseudo)-differential operator and an invariant transverse measure on a foliated manifold, in terms of topological data on the manifold and the operator. This book presents a complete proof of this...

In this fascinating history of the mathematics department at the University of California, Berkeley, Moore describes how this institution evolved from a single facutly member at a financially-troubled private college into a major research center that is ranked among the very best in the USA and in the world. Moore's account spans from its origins in the 1850s to the establishment and early years of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in the early to mid 1980s.

The Mathematical Sciences Research Institute sponsored a three day conference, May 21-23, 1984 to honor Professor George W. Mackey. The title of the conference, Group Representations, Ergodic Theory, Operator Algebras, and Mathematical Physics, reflects the interests in science that have characterized Professor wide ranging Mackey's work. The conference provided an opportunity for his students, friends and colleagues to honor him and his contributions. The conference was attended by over one hundred people and the participants included five mathematical generations Professor Mackey's...

This book develops a variety of aspects of analysis and geometry on foliated spaces which should be useful in many situations. These strands are then brought together to provide a context and to expose Connes index theorem for foliated spaces, a theorem which asserts the equality of the analytic and the topological index (two real numbers) which are associated to a tangentially elliptic operator. An additional purpose of this exposition is preparing the way towards the more general index theorem of Connes and Skandalis. This index theorem describes the abstract index class in KO (CR*(G(M))),...