The first part of this book provides a self-contained and accessible introduction to the subject in the general setting of pseudo-Riemannian manifolds and their non-degenerate submanifolds, only assuming from the reader some basic knowledge about manifold

The question of the existence of isometric embeddings of Riemannian manifolds in Euclidean space is already more than a century old. This book presents, in a systematic way, results both local and global and in arbitrary dimension but with a focus on the isometric embedding of surfaces in ${\mathbb R}^3$. The emphasis is on those PDE techniques which are essential to the most important results of the last century. The classic results in this book include the Janet-Cartan Theorem, Nirenberg's solution of the Weyl problem, and Nash's Embedding Theorem, with a simplified proof by Gunther. The book also includes the main results from the past twenty years, both local and global, on the isometric embedding of surfaces in Euclidean 3-space. The work will be indispensable to researchers in the area. Moreover, the authors integrate the results and techniques into a unified whole, providing a good entry point into the area for advanced graduate students or anyone interested in this subject. The authors avoid what is technically complicated. Background knowledge is kept to an essential minimum: a one-semester course in differential geometry and a one-year course in partial differential equations.

This text focuses on developing an intimate acquaintance with the geometric meaning of curvature and thereby introduces and demonstrates all the main technical tools needed for a more advanced course on Riemannian manifolds. It covers proving the four most fundamental theorems relating curvature and topology: the Gauss-Bonnet Theorem, the Cartan-Hadamard Theorem, Bonnet’s Theorem, and a special case of the Cartan-Ambrose-Hicks Theorem.