This volume contains surveys and research articles regarding different aspects of the theory of foliation. The main aspects concern the topology of foliations of low-dimensional manifolds, the geometry of foliated Riemannian manifolds and the dynamical properties of foliations. Among the surveys are lecture notes devoted to the analysis of some operator algebras on foliated manifolds and the theory of confoliations (objects defined recently by W Thurston and Y Eliashberg, situated between foliations and contact structures). Among the research articles one can find a detailed proof of an unpublished theorem (due to Duminy) concerning ends of leaves in exceptional minimal sets.
This is the second of two volumes on foliations (the first is Volume 23 of this series). In this volume, three specialized topics are treated: analysis on foliated spaces, characteristic classes of foliations, and foliated three-manifolds. Each of these topics represents deep interaction between foliation theory and another highly developed area of mathematics. In each case, the goal is to provide students and other interested people with a substantial introduction to the topic leading to further study using the extensive available literature.
Based on lectures delivered by the authors at Moscow State University, this volume presents a detailed introduction to the theory of Hilbert $C*$-modules. Hilbert $C*$-modules provide a natural generalization of Hilbert spaces arising when the field of scalars $\mathbf{C $ is replaced by an arbitrary $C*$-algebra. The general theory of Hilbert $C*$-modules appeared more than 30 years ago in the pioneering papers of W. Paschke and M. Rieffel and has proved to be a powerful tool inoperator algebras theory, index theory of elliptic operators, $K$- and $KK$-theory, and in noncommutative geometry as a whole. Alongside these applications, the theory of Hilbert $C*$-modules is interesting on its own. In this book, the authors explain in detail the basic notions and results of thetheory, and provide a number of important examples. Some results related to the authors' research interests are also included. A large part of the book is devoted to structural results (self-duality, reflexivity) and to nonadjointable operators. Most of the book can be read with only a basic knowledge of functional analysis; however, some experience in the theory of operator algebras makes reading easier.
This is the second printing of the book first published in 1988. The first four chapters of the volume are based on lectures given by Stroock at MIT in 1987. They form an introduction to the basic ideas of the theory of large deviations and make a suitable package on which to base a semester-length course for advanced graduate students with a strong background in analysis and some probability theory. A large selection of exercises presents important material and many applications. The last two chapters present various non-uniform results (Chapter 5) and outline the analytic approach that allows one to test and compare techniques used in previous chapters (Chapter 6).
“A compelling, spellbinding examination of a pivotal event in civil rights history . . . a highly readable and dramatic account of a major turning point.” —Journal of African-American History Black Americans in the Jim Crow South could not escape the grim reality of racial segregation, whether enforced by law or by custom. In Freedom’s Main Line: The Journey of Reconciliation and the Freedom Rides, author Derek Charles Catsam shows that courtrooms, classrooms, and cemeteries were not the only front lines in African Americans’ prolonged struggle for basic civil rights. Buses, trains, and other modes of public transportation provided the perfect means for civil rights activists to protest the second-class citizenship of African Americans, bringing the reality of the violence of segregation into the consciousness of America and the world. Freedom’s Main Line argues that the Freedom Rides, a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement, were a logical, natural evolution of such earlier efforts as the Journey of Reconciliation, relying on the principles of nonviolence so common in the larger movement. The impact of the Freedom Rides, however, was unprecedented, fixing the issue of civil rights in the national consciousness. Later activists were often dubbed Freedom Riders even if they never set foot on a bus. With challenges to segregated transportation as his point of departure, Catsam chronicles black Americans’ long journey toward increased civil rights. Freedom’s Main Line tells the story of bold incursions into the heart of institutional discrimination, journeys undertaken by heroic individuals who forced racial injustice into the national and international spotlight and helped pave the way for the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Kurt Gödel was an intellectual giant. His Incompleteness Theorem turned not only mathematics but also the whole world of science and philosophy on its head. Shattering hopes that logic would, in the end, allow us a complete understanding of the universe, Gödel's theorem also raised many provocative questions: What are the limits of rational thought? Can we ever fully understand the machines we build? Or the inner workings of our own minds? How should mathematicians proceed in the absence of complete certainty about their results? Equally legendary were Gödel's eccentricities, his close friendship with Albert Einstein, and his paranoid fear of germs that eventually led to his death from self-starvation. Now, in the first book for a general audience on this strange and brilliant thinker, John Casti and Werner DePauli bring the legend to life.
The material presented in this book corresponds to a semester-long course, ``Linear Algebra and Differential Equations'', taught to sophomore students at UC Berkeley. In contrast with typical undergraduate texts, the book offers a unifying point of view on the subject, namely that linear algebra solves several clearly-posed classification problems about such geometric objects as quadratic forms and linear transformations. This attractive viewpoint on the classical theory agrees well with modern tendencies in advanced mathematics and is shared by many research mathematicians. However, the idea of classification seldom finds its way to basic programs in mathematics, and is usually unfamiliar to undergraduates. To meet the challenge, the book first guides the reader through the entire agenda of linear algebra in the elementary environment of two-dimensional geometry, and prior to spelling out the general idea and employing it in higher dimensions, shows how it works in applications such as linear ODE systems or stability of equilibria. Appropriate as a text for regular junior and honors sophomore level college classes, the book is accessible to high school students familiar with basic calculus, and can also be useful to engineering graduate students.
In several proofs from the theory of finite-dimensional Lie algebras, an essential contribution comes from the Jordan canonical structure of linear maps acting on finite-dimensional vector spaces. On the other hand, there exist classical results concerning Lie algebras which advise us to use infinite-dimensional vector spaces as well. For example, the classical Lie Theorem asserts that all finite-dimensional irreducible representations of solvable Lie algebras are one-dimensional. Hence, from this point of view, the solvable Lie algebras cannot be distinguished from one another, that is, they cannot be classified. Even this example alone urges the infinite-dimensional vector spaces to appear on the stage. But the structure of linear maps on such a space is too little understood; for these linear maps one cannot speak about something like the Jordan canonical structure of matrices. Fortunately there exists a large class of linear maps on vector spaces of arbi trary dimension, having some common features with the matrices. We mean the bounded linear operators on a complex Banach space. Certain types of bounded operators (such as the Dunford spectral, Foia§ decomposable, scalar generalized or Colojoara spectral generalized operators) actually even enjoy a kind of Jordan decomposition theorem. One of the aims of the present book is to expound the most important results obtained until now by using bounded operators in the study of Lie algebras.
