This book has arisen from a colloquium held at St. John's College, Cambridge, in July 1989, which brought together most of today's leading experts in the field of infinite graph theory and combinatorics. This was the first such meeting ever held, and its aim was to assess the state of the art in the discipline, to consider its links with other parts of mathematics, and to discuss possible directions for future development. This volume reflects the Cambridge meeting in both level and scope. It contains research papers as well as expository surveys of particular areas. Together they offer a comprehensive portrait of infinite graph theory and combinatorics, which should be particularly attractive to anyone new to the discipline.
These notes were first used in an introductory course team taught by the authors at Appalachian State University to advanced undergraduates and beginning graduates. The text was written with four pedagogical goals in mind: offer a variety of topics in one course, get to the main themes and tools as efficiently as possible, show the relationships between the different topics, and include recent results to convince students that mathematics is a living discipline.
Julius Petersen's paper, Die Theorie der regulären graphs in Acta Mathematica, volume 15 (1891), stands at the beginning of graph theory as we know it today. The Danish group of graph theorists decided in 1985 to mark the 150th birthday of Petersen in 1989, as well as the centennial of his paper. It was felt that the occasion called for a presentation of Petersen's famous paper in its historical context and, in a wider sense, of Petersen's life and work as a whole. However, the readily available information about Julius Petersen amounted to very little (not even a full bibliography existed) and virtually nothing was known about the circumstances that led him to write his famous paper. The study of Petersen's life and work has resulted in several papers, in particular a biography, a bibliography, an annotated edition of the letters surrounding Petersen's paper of 1891, an analysis of Petersen's paper and an annotated edition of parts of Petersen's correspondence with Sylow on Galois theory. The first four of these papers, together with a survey of matching theory, form the first part of this book. In addition to these five special papers, there are papers submitted in the celebration of the Petersen centennial.
Combinatorics is a subject of increasing importance, owing to its links with computer science, statistics and algebra. This is a textbook aimed at second-year undergraduates to beginning graduates. It stresses common techniques (such as generating functions and recursive construction) which underlie the great variety of subject matter and also stresses the fact that a constructive or algorithmic proof is more valuable than an existence proof. The book is divided into two parts, the second at a higher level and with a wider range than the first. Historical notes are included which give a wider perspective on the subject. More advanced topics are given as projects and there are a number of exercises, some with solutions given.
Combinatorics is a subject of increasing importance because of its links with computer science, statistics, and algebra. This textbook stresses common techniques (such as generating functions and recursive construction) that underlie the great variety of subject matter, and the fact that a constructive or algorithmic proof is more valuable than an existence proof. The author emphasizes techniques as well as topics and includes many algorithms described in simple terms. The text should provide essential background for students in all parts of discrete mathematics.
Combinatorics has not been an established branch of mathematics for very long: the last quarter of a century has seen an explosive growth in the subject. This growth has been largely due to the doyen of combinatorialists, Paul Erdős, whose penetrating insight and insatiable curiosity has provided a huge stimulus for workers in the field. There is hardly any branch of combinatorics that has not been greatly enriched by his ideas.This volume is dedicated to Paul Erdős on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday.
Professional electronic edition, and student eBook edition (freely installable PDF with navigational links), available from diestel-graph-theory.com This standard textbook of modern graph theory, now in its sixth edition, combines the authority of a classic with the engaging freshness of style that is the hallmark of active mathematics. It covers the core material of the subject with concise yet reliably complete proofs, while offering glimpses of more advanced methods in each field by one or two deeper results, again with proofs given in full detail. The book can be used as a reliable text for an introductory course, as a graduate text, and for self-study. New in this 6th edition: Two new sections on how to apply the regularity lemma: counting lemma, removal lemma, and Szemerédi's theorem. New chapter section on chi-boundedness. Gallai's A-paths theorem. New or substantially simplified proofs of: - Lovász's perfect graph theorem - Seymour's 6-flow theorem - Turán's theorem - Tutte's theorem about flow polynomials - the Chvátal-Erdös theorem on Hamilton cycles - the tree-of-tangles theorem for graph minors (two new proofs, one canonical) - the 5-colour theorem Several new proofs of classical theorems. Many new exercises. From the reviews: “This outstanding book cannot be substituted with any other book on the present textbook market. It has every chance of becoming the standard textbook for graph theory.” Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum "Deep, clear, wonderful. This is a serious book about the heart of graph theory. It has depth and integrity." Persi Diaconis & Ron Graham, SIAM Review “The book has received a very enthusiastic reception, which it amply deserves. A masterly elucidation of modern graph theory.” Bulletin of the Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications “Succeeds dramatically… a hell of a good book.” MAA Reviews “A highlight of the book is what is by far the best account in print of the Seymour-Robertson theory of graph minors.” Mathematika “…like listening to someone explain mathematics.” Bulletin of the AMS
