New Developments In Singularity Theory

Singularities arise naturally in a huge number of different areas of mathematics and science. As a consequence, singularity theory lies at the crossroads of paths that connect many of the most important areas of applications of mathematics with some of its most abstract regions. The main goal in most problems of singularity theory is to understand the dependence of some objects of analysis, geometry, physics, or other science (functions, varieties, mappings, vector or tensor fields, differential equations, models, etc.) on parameters. The articles collected here can be grouped under three headings. (A) Singularities of real maps; (B) Singular complex variables; and (C) Singularities of homomorphic maps.

“Startling in scope and bravado.” —Janet Maslin, The New York Times “Artfully envisions a breathtakingly better world.” —Los Angeles Times “Elaborate, smart and persuasive.” —The Boston Globe “A pleasure to read.” —The Wall Street Journal One of CBS News’s Best Fall Books of 2005 • Among St Louis Post-Dispatch’s Best Nonfiction Books of 2005 • One of Amazon.com’s Best Science Books of 2005 A radical and optimistic view of the future course of human development from the bestselling author of How to Create a Mind and The Singularity is Nearer who Bill Gates calls “the best person I know at predicting the future of artificial intelligence” For over three decades, Ray Kurzweil has been one of the most respected and provocative advocates of the role of technology in our future. In his classic The Age of Spiritual Machines, he argued that computers would soon rival the full range of human intelligence at its best. Now he examines the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: the union of human and machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our creations.

The Singularity School and Conference took place in Luminy, Marseille, from January 24th to February 25th 2005. More than 180 mathematicians from over 30 countries converged to discuss recent developments in singularity theory. The volume contains the elementary and advanced courses conducted by singularities specialists during the conference, general lectures on singularity theory, and lectures on applications of the theory to various domains. The subjects range from geometry and topology of singularities, through real and complex singularities, to applications of singularities.

"Differential Geometry from a Singularity Theory Viewpoint provides a new look at the fascinating and classical subject of the differential geometry of surfaces in Euclidean spaces. The book uses singularity theory to capture some key geometric features of surfaces. It describes the theory of contact and its link with the theory of caustics and wavefronts. It then uses the powerful techniques of these theories to deduce geometric information about surfaces embedded in 3, 4 and 5-dimensional Euclidean spaces. The book also includes recent work of the authors and their collaborators on the geometry of sub-manifolds in Minkowski spaces."--

This textbook gives a contemporary account of singularity theory and its principal application, bifurcation theory.

This book is an introduction to singularities for graduate students and researchers. It is said that algebraic geometry originated in the seventeenth century with the famous work Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences by Descartes. In that book he introduced coordinates to the study of geometry. After its publication, research on algebraic varieties developed steadily. Many beautiful results emerged in mathematicians’ works. Most of them were about non-singular varieties. Singularities were considered “bad” objects that interfered with knowledge of the structure of an algebraic variety. In the past three decades, however, it has become clear that singularities are necessary for us to have a good description of the framework of varieties. For example, it is impossible to formulate minimal model theory for higher-dimensional cases without singularities. Another example is that the moduli spaces of varieties have natural compactification, the boundaries of which correspond to singular varieties. A remarkable fact is that the study of singularities is developing and people are beginning to see that singularities are interesting and can be handled by human beings. This book is a handy introduction to singularities for anyone interested in singularities. The focus is on an isolated singularity in an algebraic variety. After preparation of varieties, sheaves, and homological algebra, some known results about 2-dim ensional isolated singularities are introduced. Then a classification of higher-dimensional isolated singularities is shown according to plurigenera and the behavior of singularities under a deformation is studied.

The book is a collection of surveys and original research articles concentrating on new perspectives and research directions at the crossroads of algebraic geometry, topology, and singularity theory. The papers, written by leading researchers working on various topics of the above fields, are the outcome of the “Némethi60: Geometry and Topology of Singularities” conference held at the Alfréd Rényi Institute of Mathematics in Budapest, from May 27 to 31, 2019. Both the conference and this resulting volume are in honor of Professor András Némethi, on the occasion of his 60th birthday, whose work plays a decisive and influential role in the interactions between the above fields. The book should serve as a valuable resource for graduate students and researchers to deepen the new perspectives, methods, and connections between geometry and topology regarding singularities.