The Ahlfors-Bers Colloquia commemorate the mathematical legacy of Lars Ahlfors and Lipman Bers. The core of this legacy lies in the fields of geometric function theory, Teichmuller theory, hyperbolic geometry, and partial differential equations. However, the work of Ahlfors and Bers has impacted and created interactions with many other fields of mathematics, such as algebraic geometry, dynamical systems, topology, geometric group theory, mathematical physics, and number theory. Recent years have seen a flowering of this legacy with an increased interest in their work. This current volume contains articles on a wide variety of subjects that are central to this legacy. These include papers in Kleinian groups, classical Riemann surface theory, translation surfaces, algebraic geometry and dynamics. The majority of the papers present new research, but there are survey articles as well.

Contains proceedings that reflects the 2001 Ahlfors-Bers Colloquium held at the University of Connecticut (Storrs). This book is suitable for graduate students and researchers interested in complex analysis.

The Ahlfors–Bers Colloquia commemorate the mathematical legacy of Lars Ahlfors and Lipman Bers. The core of this legacy lies in the fields of geometric function theory, Teichmüller theory, hyperbolic geometry, and partial differential equations. Today we see the influence of Ahlfors and Bers on algebraic geometry, mathematical physics, dynamics, probability, geometric group theory, number theory and topology. Recent years have seen a flowering of this legacy with an increased interest in their work. This current volume contains articles on a wide variety of subjects that are central to this legacy. These include papers in Kleinian groups, classical Riemann surface theory, Teichmüller theory, mapping class groups, geometric group theory, and statistical mechanics.

The Ahlfors-Bers Colloquia commemorate the mathematical legacy of Lars Ahlfors and Lipman Bers. The core of this legacy lies in the fields of geometric function theory, Teichmuller theory, hyperbolic manifolds, and partial differential equations. However, the work of Ahlfors and Bers has impacted and created interactions with many other fields, such as algebraic geometry, mathematical physics, dynamics, geometric group theory, number theory, and topology. The triannual Ahlford-Bers colloquia serve as a venue to disseminate the relevant work to the wider mathematical community and bring the key participants together to ponder future directions in the field. The present volume includes a wide range of articles in the fields central to this legacy. The majority of articles present new results, but there are expository articles as well.

The subject of this handbook is Teichmuller theory in a wide sense, namely the theory of geometric structures on surfaces and their moduli spaces. This includes the study of vector bundles on these moduli spaces, the study of mapping class groups, the relation with $3$-manifolds, the relation with symmetric spaces and arithmetic groups, the representation theory of fundamental groups, and applications to physics. Thus the handbook is a place where several fields of mathematics interact: Riemann surfaces, hyperbolic geometry, partial differential equations, several complex variables, algebraic geometry, algebraic topology, combinatorial topology, low-dimensional topology, theoretical physics, and others. This confluence of ideas toward a unique subject is a manifestation of the unity and harmony of mathematics. This volume contains surveys on the fundamental theory as well as surveys on applications to and relations with the fields mentioned above. It is written by leading experts in these fields. Some of the surveys contain classical material, while others present the latest developments of the theory as well as open problems. This volume is divided into the following four sections: The metric and the analytic theory The group theory The algebraic topology of mapping class groups and moduli spaces Teichmuller theory and mathematical physics This handbook is addressed to graduate students and researchers in all the fields mentioned.

In the twentieth century, American mathematicians began to make critical advances in a field previously dominated by Europeans. Harvard's mathematics department was at the center of these developments. A History in Sum is an inviting account of the pioneers who trailblazed a distinctly American tradition of mathematics--in algebraic geometry, complex analysis, and other esoteric subdisciplines that are rarely written about outside of journal articles or advanced textbooks. The heady mathematical concepts that emerged, and the men and women who shaped them, are described here in lively, accessible prose. The story begins in 1825, when a precocious sixteen-year-old freshman, Benjamin Peirce, arrived at the College. He would become the first American to produce original mathematics--an ambition frowned upon in an era when professors largely limited themselves to teaching. Peirce's successors transformed the math department into a world-class research center, attracting to the faculty such luminaries as George David Birkhoff. Influential figures soon flocked to Harvard, some overcoming great challenges to pursue their elected calling. A History in Sum elucidates the contributions of these extraordinary minds and makes clear why the history of the Harvard mathematics department is an essential part of the history of mathematics in America and beyond.

This book is devoted to group-theoretic aspects of topological dynamics such as studying groups using their actions on topological spaces, using group theory to study symbolic dynamics, and other connections between group theory and dynamical systems. One of the main applications of this approach to group theory is the study of asymptotic properties of groups such as growth and amenability. The book presents recently developed techniques of studying groups of dynamical origin using the structure of their orbits and associated groupoids of germs, applications of the iterated monodromy groups to hyperbolic dynamical systems, topological full groups and their properties, amenable groups, groups of intermediate growth, and other topics. The book is suitable for graduate students and researchers interested in group theory, transformations defined by automata, topological and holomorphic dynamics, and theory of topological groupoids. Each chapter is supplemented by exercises of various levels of complexity.

This is the Proceedings of the ICM 2010 Satellite Conference on “Buildings, Finite Geometries and Groups” organized at the Indian Statistical Institute, Bangalore, during August 29 – 31, 2010. This is a collection of articles by some of the currently very active research workers in several areas related to finite simple groups, Chevalley groups and their generalizations: theory of buildings, finite incidence geometries, modular representations, Lie theory, etc. These articles reflect the current major trends in research in the geometric and combinatorial aspects of the study of these groups. The unique perspective the authors bring in their articles on the current developments and the major problems in their area is expected to be very useful to research mathematicians, graduate students and potential new entrants to these areas.

This volume contains the proceedings of the AMS Special Session on Quasiconformal Mappings, Riemann Surfaces, and Teichmuller Spaces, held in honor of Clifford J. Earle, from October 2-3, 2010, in Syracuse, New York. This volume includes a wide range of papers on Teichmuller theory and related areas. It provides a broad survey of the present state of research and the applications of quasiconformal mappings, Riemann surfaces, complex dynamical systems, Teichmuller theory, and geometric function theory. The papers in this volume reflect the directions of research in different aspects of these fields and also give the reader an idea of how Teichmuller theory intersects with other areas of mathematics.

The Ahlfors-Bers Colloquia commemorate the mathematical legacy of Lars Ahlfors and Lipman Bers. The core of this legacy lies in the fields of geometric function theory, Teichmuller theory, hyperbolic geometry, and partial differential equations. However,