Topology And Combinatorial Group Theory

This book is about three seemingly independent areas of mathematics: combinatorial group theory, the theory of Lie algebras and affine algebraic geometry. Indeed, for many years these areas were being developed fairly independently. Combinatorial group theory, the oldest of the three, was born in the beginning of the 20th century as a branch of low-dimensional topology. Very soon, it became an important area of mathematics with its own powerful techniques. In the 1950s, combinatorial group theory started to influence, rather substantially, the theory of Lie algebrasj thus combinatorial theory of Lie algebras was shaped, although the origins of the theory can be traced back to the 1930s. In the 1960s, B. Buchberger introduced what is now known as Gröbner bases. This marked the beginning of a new, "combinatorial", era in commu­ tative algebra. It is not very likely that Buchberger was directly influenced by ideas from combinatorial group theory, but his famous algorithm bears resemblance to Nielsen's method, although in a more sophisticated form.

This book consists of contributions from experts, presenting a fruitful interplay between different approaches to discrete geometry. Most of the chapters were collected at the conference “Geometry and Symmetry” in Veszprém, Hungary from 29 June to 3 July 2015. The conference was dedicated to Károly Bezdek and Egon Schulte on the occasion of their 60th birthdays, acknowledging their highly regarded contributions in these fields.

Applications of Group Theory to Combinatorics contains 11 survey papers from international experts in combinatorics, group theory and combinatorial topology. The contributions cover topics from quite a diverse spectrum, such as design theory, Belyi functions, group theory, transitive graphs, regular maps, and Hurwitz problems, and present the state-of-the-art in these areas.