Singularity Theory And Some Problems Of Functional Analysis

The emergence of singularity theory marks the return of mathematics to the study of the simplest analytical objects: functions, graphs, curves, surfaces. The modern singularity theory for smooth mappings, which is currently undergoing intensive developments, can be thought of as a crossroad where the most abstract topics (such as algebraic and differential geometry and topology, complex analysis, invariant theory, and Lie group theory) meet the most applied topics (such as dynamical systems, mathematical physics, geometrical optics, mathematical economics, and control theory). The papers in this volume include reviews of established areas as well as presentations of recent results in singularity theory. The authors have paid special attention to examples and discussion of results rather than burying the ideas in formalism, notation, and technical details. The aim is to introduce all mathematicians - as well as physicists, engineers, and other consumers of singularity theory - to the world of ideas and methods in this burgeoning area.

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.

This collection is designed to acquaint readers with advances in Radon transforms carried out in the former Soviet Union. The papers focus on mathematical problems related to applications of Radon transforms. Some of the problems arose from practical tomography, while others are theoretical problems originating in tomography. The book should be of use to mathematicians working in integral geometry and mathematical problems of tomography, as well as scientists who work on inverse problems and their computer realization.

The papers in this collection were written primarily by members of the St. Petersburg seminar in mathematical physics. The seminar, now run by O. A. Ladyzhenskaya, was initiated in 1947 by V. I. Smirnov, to whose memory this volume is dedicated. The papers in the collection are devoted mainly to wave propagation processes, scattering theory, integrability of nonlinear equations, and related problems of spectral theory of differential and integral operators. The book is of interest to mathematicians working in mathematical physics and differential equations, as well as to physicists studying various wave propagation processes.

This collection contains articles that present recent results by geometers in Russia and the Ukraine. Papers in the collection deal with various questions related to the structure, symmetries, and embeddings of submanifolds in Euclidean and pseudo-Euclidian spaces. This collection offers a review of the challenges facing specialists in geometry in the large and features current research in the field.

This collection contains translations of papers on propositional satisfiability and related logical problems which appeared in Problemy Sokrashcheniya Perebora, published in Russian in 1987 by the Scientific Council ``Cybernetics'' of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The problems form the nucleus of this intensively developing area. This translation is dedicated to the memory of two remarkable Russian mathematicians, Sergei Maslov and his wife, Nina Maslova. Maslov is known as the originator of the inverse method in automated deduction, which was discovered at the same time as the resolution method of J. A. Robinson and has approximately the same range of applications. In 1981, Maslov proposed an iterative algorithm for propositional satisfiability based on some general ideas of search described in detail in his posthumously published book, Theory of Deductive Systems and Its Applications (1986; English 1987). This collection contains translations of papers on proposititional satisfiability and related logical problems. The papers related to Maslov's iterative method of search reduction play a significant role.