No label defined (Q3840967)

The book under review is a reprint of the author's work first published in 1916 (JFM 46.0921.02). The original book became a classic in its field and was reprinted in (1971; Zbl 0251.50002). The text therefore is in the style and mathematical language from the early 20th century which makes it at times difficult to read if one is used to the more precise definitions and formulations of todays mathematics. Nevertheless, the book provides a wealth of information from both a historical and mathematical perspective including many early ideas from the theory of algebraic curves and surfaces. The theme of the book is the geometry of the circle and sphere which is investigated from the point of elementary geometry, Cartesian geometry, projective geometry and differential geometry. A circle basically is a Euclidean circle or a Euclidean line in the Euclidean plane although these words are also used to mean curves in 2- and 3-dimensional space. After passing over to the one-point compactification of the Euclidean plane, the Euclidean 2-sphere, Euclidean lines and circles become indistinguishable and this is the preferred point of view in the book. Besides the familiar geometric and analytic descriptions, the author associates with every circle an involutory permutation of the 2-sphere, the inversion at that circle. These inversions are one of the main tools in the author's investigation of circles. For one, various configurations of circles (e.g. the circle inscribed or circumscribed to a triangle or the circles in the classical Apollonius problem, to name a few) are described in terms of the associated inversions. Furthermore, the group generated by all inversions is studied. Of course, this group is the familiar group PSL\(_2(\mathbb C)\) of all fractional linear maps. Geometric properties of transformations in and subgroups of this group are determined. The other main tool in the investigation of systems of circles is the so-called tetracyclic space of circles. Using complex numbers a Euclidean circle or Euclidean line can be described as the set of all solutions \(z\) of \(az\bar z+bz+c\bar z+d=0\) for certain \(a,b,c,d\in\mathbb C\) where \(\bar z\) is the complex conjugate of the complex number \(z\). Then the 1-dimensional space spanned by the vector \((a,b,c,d)\) in complex 3-dimensional projective space \(S_4\) is used as a (homogeneous) coordinate for this circle. The collection of all circles under this correspondence forms a quadratic subset of \(S_4\), the tetracyclic space. Using tetracyclic coordinates the relative relation of circles can easily be described. The treatment of spheres follows a similar path by introducing inversions in three dimensions, sphere transformations and pentacyclic coordinates. Furthermore, for both circles and spheres, oriented versions are defined and these geometric objects and their associated groups (Laguerre inversions and groups) are investigated. Also possible intersections of circles and spheres and configurations of circles on spheres are determined. The final chapter deals with the differential geometry of circle systems. Here a more algebraic-analytic point of view is taken and some invariants of curves are described.