No label defined (Q4356746)

Considerable amount of combinatorial problems have recently been solved by the attractive and sometimes unexpected application of topological tools. Most often, the combinatorial problem is reduced to the non-existence of the equivariant mapping from the configuration space to the ``test'' space (naturally arising from the problem). This problem is then treated by the cohomological index theory. The author presents very nice, self-contained and user-friendly account of the concepts and methods of equivariant topology and several of their applications in combinatorics and combinatorial geometry. He particularly stresses extremely nice and clear presentation of the cohomological index theory. A very natural and simple integer-valued index function is defined and their properties are established. This exposition provides a smooth introduction to the powerful tools of equivariant topology for non-experts who want to use them in the areas of their interest.