Geometry of surfaces (Q1189578)

The book is essentially devoted to the geometry of surfaces of constant curvature, exploring the interplay between geometry and topology and introducing in the basic notions of curvature, group actions and covering spaces. The contents is the following: 1. The Euclidean plane (isometries and its classification). 2. Euclidean surfaces (cylinder, torus, Klein bottle, quotient surfaces, the covering isometry group, Killing-Hopf theorem). 3. The sphere (isometries, stereographic projection, groups of isometries, the elliptic plane). 4. The hyperbolic plane (the pseudosphere, the half plane and the disc models, classification of isometries). 5. Hyperbolic surfaces (construction of hyperbolic surfaces from polygons, geometric realization of compact surfaces). 6. Paths and geodesics (normal forms of compact orientable surfaces, Euler characteristic, paths and homotopy, the fundamental group, genus, closed geodesic paths). 7. Planar and spherical tesselations (fundamental regions, triangle tesselations). 8. Tessellations of compact surfaces (orbifolds and desingularization). The prerequisites are a little linear algebra, calculus as far as hyperbolic functions, basic group theory and basic topology. Surely the book will stimulate the interest in areas, which arise in a wide variety of situations ranging from geometry and analytic functions to physics. The book is carefully written and contains valuable exercises and informal discussions with historical remarks at the end of each chapter.