This book contains a collection of survey articles of exciting new developments in geometry, written in tribute to Simon Donaldson to celebrate his 60th birthday. Reflecting the wide range of Donaldson's interests and influence, the papers range from algebraic geometry and topology through symplectic geometry and geometric analysis to mathematical physics. Their expository nature means the book acts as an invitation to the various topics described, while also giving a sense of the links between these different areas and the unity of modern geometry.

This book represents a novel approach to differential topology. Its main focus is to give a comprehensive introduction to the classification of manifolds, with special attention paid to the case of surfaces, for which the book provides a complete classification from many points of view: topological, smooth, constant curvature, complex, and conformal. Each chapter briefly revisits basic results usually known to graduate students from an alternative perspective, focusing on surfaces. We provide full proofs of some remarkable results that sometimes are missed in basic courses (e.g., the...