The work of Professor Eduard Cech had a si~ificant influence on the development of algebraic and general topology and differential geometry. This book, which appears on the occasion of the centenary of Cech's birth, contains some of his most important papers and traces the subsequent trends emerging from his ideas. The body of the book consists of four chapters devoted to algebraic topology, Cech-Stone compactification, dimension theory and differential geometry. Each of these includes a selection of Cech's papers, a brief summary of some results which followed from his work or constituted solutions to the problems he posed, and several selected papers by various authors concerning the areas of study he initiated. The book also contains a concise biography borrowed with minor changes from the book Topological papers of E. tech, a list of Cech's publications and a very brief note on his activity in the didactics of mathematics. The editors wish to express their sincere gratitude to all who contributed to the completion and publication of this book.

The June 1993 conference was organized to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Czech mathematician Edward Cech. The main topics of the conference were the most recent results in the stable and unstable homotopy theory. Among the topics in 22 refereed papers: on finiteness of subgroups of self-homotopy equivalences; the Chen groups of the pure braid group; Morava's change of rings theorem; the Boardman homomorphism; and a comparison criterion for certain loop spaces. No index. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This book is the first one of a work in several volumes, treating the history of the development of topology. The work contains papers which can be classified into 4 main areas. Thus there are contributions dealing with the life and work of individual topologists, with specific schools of topology, with research in topology in various countries, and with the development of topology in different periods. The work is not restricted to topology in the strictest sense but also deals with applications and generalisations in a broad sense. Thus it also treats, e.g., categorical topology, interactions with functional analysis, convergence spaces, and uniform spaces. Written by specialists in the field, it contains a wealth of information which is not available anywhere else.

In Natural Communication kritisiert der Autor das derzeitige Paradigma der Komplexitätswissenschaften, die Ziele immer spezifisch in den Blick nimmt. Er schlägt eine Alternative vor, die eine grundlegende Architektur der Kommunikation vorstellt. Sein Modell der „natürlichen Kommunikation" schließt moderne theoretische Konzepte aus Mathematik und Physik mit ein, insbesondere der Kategorietheorie und der Quantenmechanik. Er abstrahiert daraus präzise Grundbegriffe, die zu einer terminologischen Basis dieser Theorie führen und die Möglichkeit eröffnen, mit Komplexität neu umzugehen. Der Autor ist davon überzeugt, dass es nur durch einen Blick in die Vergangenheit möglich ist, eine Kontinuität und Kohärenz in unserer gegenwärtigen Denkweise herzustellen, insbesondere in Bezug auf die Komplexität.