Kodaira

This book deals with the classical theory of Nevanlinna on the value distribution of meromorphic functions of one complex variable, based on minimum prerequisites for complex manifolds. The theory was extended to several variables by S. Kobayashi, T. Ochiai, J. Carleson, and P. Griffiths in the early 1970s. K. Kodaira took up this subject in his course at The University of Tokyo in 1973 and gave an introductory account of this development in the context of his final paper, contained in this book. The first three chapters are devoted to holomorphic mappings from C to complex manifolds. In the fourth chapter, holomorphic mappings between higher dimensional manifolds are covered. The book is a valuable treatise on the Nevanlinna theory, of special interests to those who want to understand Kodaira's unique approach to basic questions on complex manifolds.

In recent years new topological methods, especially the theory of sheaves founded by J. LERAY, have been applied successfully to algebraic geometry and to the theory of functions of several complex variables. H. CARTAN and J. -P. SERRE have shown how fundamental theorems on holomorphically complete manifolds (STEIN manifolds) can be for­ mulated in terms of sheaf theory. These theorems imply many facts of function theory because the domains of holomorphy are holomorphically complete. They can also be applied to algebraic geometry because the complement of a hyperplane section of an algebraic manifold is holo­ morphically complete. J. -P. SERRE has obtained important results on algebraic manifolds by these and other methods. Recently many of his results have been proved for algebraic varieties defined over a field of arbitrary characteristic. K. KODAIRA and D. C. SPENCER have also applied sheaf theory to algebraic geometry with great success.

This is an English translation of the book in Japanese, published as the volume 20 in the series of Seminar Notes from The University of Tokyo that grew out of a course of lectures by Professor Kunihiko Kodaira in 1967.