From the Preface of the First Edition: ``Our purpose in writing this book is to put material which we found stimulating and interesting as graduate students into form. It is intended for individual study and for use as a text for graduate level courses such as the one from which this material stems, given by Professor W. Ambrose at MIT in 1958-1959. Previously the material had been organized in roughly the same form by him and Professor I. M. Singer, and they in turn drew upon thework of Ehresmann, Chern, and E. Cartan. Our contributions have been primarily to fill out the material with details, asides and problems, and to alter notation slightly. ``We believe that this subject matter, besides being an interesting area for specialization, lends itself especially to a synthesisof several branches of mathematics, and thus should be studied by a wide spectrum of graduate students so as to break away from narrow specialization and see how their own fields are related and applied in other fields. We feel that at least part of this subject should be of interest not only to those working in geometry, but also to those in analysis, topology, algebra, and even probability and astronomy. In order that this book be meaningful, the reader's background should include realvariable theory, linear algebra, and point set topology.'' This volume is a reprint with few corrections of the original work published in 1964. Starting with the notion of differential manifolds, the first six chapters lay a foundation for the study of Riemannian manifolds through specializing the theoryof connections on principle bundles and affine connections. The geometry of Riemannian manifolds is emphasized, as opposed to global analysis, so that the theorems of Hopf-Rinow, Hadamard-Cartan, and Cartan's local isometry theorem are included, but no elliptic operator theory. Isometric immersions are treated elegantly and from a global viewpoint. In the final chapter are the more complicated estimates on which much of the research in Riemannian geometry is based: the Morse index theorem,Synge's theorems on closed geodesics, Rauch's comparison theorem, and the original proof of the Bishop volume-comparison theorem (with Myer's Theorem as a corollary). The first edition of this book was the origin of a modern treatment of global Riemannian geometry, using the carefully conceived notationthat has withstood the test of time. The primary source material for the book were the papers and course notes of brilliant geometers, including E. Cartan, C. Ehresmann, I. M. Singer, and W. Ambrose. It is tightly organized, uniformly very precise, and amazingly comprehensive for its length.

Differential geometry began as the study of curves and surfaces using the methods of calculus. This book offers a graduate-level introduction to the tools and structures of modern differential geometry. It includes the topics usually found in a course on differentiable manifolds, such as vector bundles, tensors, and de Rham cohomology.

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 construction of triangulations on surfaces, the classification of surfaces, the Gauss-Bonnet theorem, the degree-genus formula for complex plane curves, the existence of constant curvature metrics on conformal surfaces), and we give hints to questions about higher dimensional manifolds. Many examples and remarks are scattered through the book. Each chapter ends with an exhaustive collection of problems and a list of topics for further study. The book is primarily addressed to graduate students who did take standard introductory courses on algebraic topology, differential and Riemannian geometry, or algebraic geometry, but have not seen their deep interconnections, which permeate a modern approach to geometry and topology of manifolds.

Manifolds play an important role in topology, geometry, complex analysis, algebra, and classical mechanics. Learning manifolds differs from most other introductory mathematics in that the subject matter is often completely unfamiliar. This introduction guides readers by explaining the roles manifolds play in diverse branches of mathematics and physics. The book begins with the basics of general topology and gently moves to manifolds, the fundamental group, and covering spaces.

Manifolds, the higher-dimensional analogs of smooth curves and surfaces, are fundamental objects in modern mathematics. Combining aspects of algebra, topology, and analysis, manifolds have also been applied to classical mechanics, general relativity, and quantum field theory. In this streamlined introduction to the subject, the theory of manifolds is presented with the aim of helping the reader achieve a rapid mastery of the essential topics. By the end of the book the reader should be able to compute, at least for simple spaces, one of the most basic topological invariants of a manifold, its de Rham cohomology. Along the way, the reader acquires the knowledge and skills necessary for further study of geometry and topology. The requisite point-set topology is included in an appendix of twenty pages; other appendices review facts from real analysis and linear algebra. Hints and solutions are provided to many of the exercises and problems. This work may be used as the text for a one-semester graduate or advanced undergraduate course, as well as by students engaged in self-study. Requiring only minimal undergraduate prerequisites, 'Introduction to Manifolds' is also an excellent foundation for Springer's GTM 82, 'Differential Forms in Algebraic Topology'.

One ofthe most important features of the development of physical and mathematical sciences in the beginning of the 20th century was the demolition of prevailing views of the three-dimensional Euclidean space as the only possible mathematical description of real physical space. Apriorization of geometrical notions and identification of physical 3 space with its mathematical modellR were characteristic for these views. The discovery of non-Euclidean geometries led mathematicians to the understanding that Euclidean geometry is nothing more than one of many logically admissible geometrical systems. Relativity theory amended our understanding of the problem of space by amalgamating space and time into an integral four-dimensional manifold. One of the most important problems, lying at the crossroad of natural sciences and philosophy is the problem of the structure of the world as a whole. There are a lot of possibilities for the topology offour dimensional space-time, and at first sight a lot of possibilities arise in cosmology. In principle, not only can the global topology of the universe be complicated, but also smaller scale topological structures can be very nontrivial. One can imagine two "usual" spaces connected with a "throat", making the topology of the union complicated.

Geometry of Manifolds