Geometry of Space

This book is about differential geometry of space curves and surfaces. The formulation and presentation are largely based on a tensor calculus approach. It can be used as part of a course on tensor calculus as well as a textbook or a reference for an intermediate-level course on differential geometry of curves and surfaces. The book is furnished with an index, extensive sets of exercises and many cross references, which are hyperlinked for the ebook users, to facilitate linking related concepts and sections.

The present work is the first volume of a substantially enlarged version of the mimeographed notes of a course of lectures first given by me in the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta, India, during 1964-65. When it was suggested that these lectures be developed into a book, I readily agreed and took the opportunity to extend the scope of the material covered. No background in physics is in principle necessary for understand­ ing the essential ideas in this work. However, a high degree of mathematical maturity is certainly indispensable.

The main topics discussed at the D. M. V. Seminar were the connectedness theorems of Fulton and Hansen, linear normality and subvarieties of small codimension in projective spaces. They are closely related; thus the connectedness theorem can be used to prove the inequality-part of Hartshorne's conjecture on linear normality, whereas Deligne's generalisation of the connectedness theorem leads to a refinement of Barth's results on the topology of varieties with small codimension in a projective space. The material concerning the connectedness theorem itself (including the highly surprising application to tamely ramified coverings of the projective plane) can be found in the paper by Fulton and the first author: W. Fulton, R. Lazarsfeld, Connectivity and its applications in algebraic geometry, Lecture Notes in Math. 862, p. 26-92 (Springer 1981).