Foundations of Differentiable Manifolds and Lie Groups gives a clear, detailed, and careful development of the basic facts on manifold theory and Lie Groups. Coverage includes differentiable manifolds, tensors and differentiable forms, Lie groups and homogenous spaces, and integration on manifolds. The book also provides a proof of the de Rham theorem via sheaf cohomology theory and develops the local theory of elliptic operators culminating in a proof of the Hodge theorem.

Foundations of Differentiable Manifolds and Lie Groups gives a clear, detailed, and careful development of the basic facts on manifold theory and Lie Groups. It includes differentiable manifolds, tensors and differentiable forms. Lie groups and homogenous spaces, integration on manifolds, and in addition provides a proof of the de Rham theorem via sheaf cohomology theory, and develops the local theory of elliptic operators culminating in a proof of the Hodge theorem. Those interested in any of the diverse areas of mathematics requiring the notion of a differentiable manifold will find this beginning graduate-level text extremely useful.

A famous Swiss professor gave a student’s course in Basel on Riemann surfaces. After a couple of lectures, a student asked him, “Professor, you have as yet not given an exact de nition of a Riemann surface.” The professor answered, “With Riemann surfaces, the main thing is to UNDERSTAND them, not to de ne them.” The student’s objection was reasonable. From a formal viewpoint, it is of course necessary to start as soon as possible with strict de nitions, but the professor’s - swer also has a substantial background. The pure de nition of a Riemann surface— as a complex 1-dimensional complex analytic manifold—contributes little to a true understanding. It takes a long time to really be familiar with what a Riemann s- face is. This example is typical for the objects of global analysis—manifolds with str- tures. There are complex concrete de nitions but these do not automatically explain what they really are, what we can do with them, which operations they really admit, how rigid they are. Hence, there arises the natural question—how to attain a deeper understanding? One well-known way to gain an understanding is through underpinning the d- nitions, theorems and constructions with hierarchies of examples, counterexamples and exercises. Their choice, construction and logical order is for any teacher in global analysis an interesting, important and fun creating task.

Introductory text for advanced undergraduates and graduate students presents systematic study of the topological structure of smooth manifolds, starting with elements of theory and concluding with method of surgery. 1993 edition.