Aurora: Dover Modern Math Originals

Based on author Siavash Shahshahani's extensive teaching experience, this volume presents a thorough, rigorous course on the theory of differentiable manifolds. Geared toward advanced undergraduates and graduate students in mathematics, the treatment's prerequisites include a strong background in undergraduate mathematics, including multivariable calculus, linear algebra, elementary abstract algebra, and point set topology. More than 200 exercises offer students ample opportunity to gauge their skills and gain additional insights. The four-part treatment begins with a single chapter devoted to the tensor algebra of linear spaces and their mappings. Part II brings in neighboring points to explore integrating vector fields, Lie bracket, exterior derivative, and Lie derivative. Part III, involving manifolds and vector bundles, develops the main body of the course. The final chapter provides a glimpse into geometric structures by introducing connections on the tangent bundle as a tool to implant the second derivative and the derivative of vector fields on the base manifold. Relevant historical and philosophical asides enhance the mathematical text, and helpful Appendixes offer supplementary material.

Category theory has provided the foundations for many of the twentieth century's greatest advances in pure mathematics. This concise, original text for a one-semester course on the subject is derived from courses that author Emily Riehl taught at Harvard and Johns Hopkins Universities. The treatment introduces the essential concepts of category theory: categories, functors, natural transformations, the Yoneda lemma, limits and colimits, adjunctions, monads, and other topics. Suitable for advanced undergraduates and graduate students in mathematics, the text provides tools for understanding and attacking difficult problems in algebra, number theory, algebraic geometry, and algebraic topology. Drawing upon a broad range of mathematical examples from the categorical perspective, the author illustrates how the concepts and constructions of category theory arise from and illuminate more basic mathematical ideas. Prerequisites are limited to familiarity with some basic set theory and logic.

Mathematical induction - along with its equivalents, complete induction and well-ordering, and its immediate consequence, the pigeonhole principle - constitute essential proof techniques. Every mathematician is familiar with mathematical induction, and every student of mathematics requires a grasp of its concepts. This volume provides an introduction and a thorough exposure to these proof techniques. Geared toward students of mathematics at all levels, the text is particularly suitable for courses in mathematical induction, theorem-proving, and problem-solving. The treatment begins with both intuitive and formal explanations of mathematical induction and its equivalents. The next chapter presents many problems consisting of results to be proved by induction, with solutions omitted to enable instructors to assign them to students. Problems vary in difficulty; the majority of them require little background, and the most advanced involve calculus or linear algebra. The final chapter features proofs too complicated for students to find on their own, some of which are famous theorems by well-known mathematicians. For these beautiful and important theorems, the author provides expositions and proofs. The text concludes with a helpful Appendix providing the logical equivalence of the various forms of induction.

This highly readable volume on optimization in function spaces is based on author Amol Sasane's lecture notes, which he developed over several years while teaching a course for third-year undergraduates at the London School of Economics. The classroom-tested text is written in an informal but precise style that emphasizes clarity and detail, taking students step by step through each subject. Numerous examples throughout the text clarify methods, and a substantial number of exercises provide reinforcement. Detailed solutions to all of the exercises make this book ideal for self-study. The topics are relevant to students in engineering and economics as well as mathematics majors. Prerequisites include multivariable calculus and basic linear algebra. The necessary background in differential equations and elementary functional analysis is developed within the text, offering students a self-contained treatment.

This well-written and engaging volume, intended for undergraduates, introduces knot theory, an area of growing interest in contemporary mathematics. The hands-on approach features many exercises to be completed by readers. Prerequisites are only a basic familiarity with linear algebra and a willingness to explore the subject in a hands-on manner. The opening chapter offers activities that explore the world of knots and links - including games with knots - and invites the reader to generate their own questions in knot theory. Subsequent chapters guide the reader to discover the formal definition of a knot, families of knots and links, and various knot notations. Additional topics include combinatorial knot invariants, knot polynomials, unknotting operations, and virtual knots.

Suitable for advanced undergraduates and graduate students in mathematics and computer science, this precise, self-contained treatment of Galois theory features detailed proofs and complete solutions to exercises. Originally published in French as Algèbre - Polynômes, théorie de Galois et applications informatiques, this 2017 Dover Aurora edition marks the volume's first English-language publication. The three-part treatment begins by providing the essential introduction to Galois theory. The second part is devoted to the algebraic, normal, and separable Galois extensions that constitute the center of the theory and examines abelian, cyclic, cyclotomic, and radical extensions. This section enables readers to acquire a comprehensive understanding of the Galois group of a polynomial. The third part deals with applications of Galois theory, including excellent discussions of several important real-world applications of these ideas, including cryptography and error-control coding theory. Symbolic computation via the Maple computer algebra system is incorporated throughout the text (though other software of symbolic computation could be used as well), along with a large number of very interesting exercises with full solutions.

In addition to serving as an introduction to the basics of point-set topology, this text bridges the gap between the elementary calculus sequence and higher-level mathematics courses. The versatile, original approach focuses on learning to read and write proofs rather than covering advanced topics. Based on lecture notes that were developed over many years at The University of Seattle, the treatment is geared toward undergraduate math majors and suitable for a variety of introductory courses. Starting with elementary concepts in logic and basic techniques of proof writing, the text defines topological and metric spaces and surveys continuity and homeomorphism. Additional subjects include product spaces, connectedness, and compactness. The final chapter illustrates topology's use in other branches of mathematics with proofs of the fundamental theorem of algebra and of Picard's existence theorem for differential equations.