The Riemann legacy. Riemannian ideas in mathematics and physics

Publication date 20 August 1997

Bernhard Riemann mathematical work and ramifications

History of mathematics in the 19th century (01A55) History of mathematics in the 20th century (01A60) History of number theory (11-03) History of several complex variables and analytic spaces (32-03) History of calculus of variations and optimal control (49-03) History of differential geometry (53-03) History of manifolds and cell complexes (57-03) History of global analysis (58-03)

Review text

In his foreword, the author states: ``It was Riemann who, probably more then anyone else, enriched mathematics with new ideas. Riemann's intuition had an extreme influence on the development of mathematics and physics in many branches: geometry, real and complex function theory, algebraic functions, analytic number theory, differential equations. In the book under review, the author wants to show how Riemann's ideas developed from ``germs in mathematics to huge trees. He presents the development in different branches in six parts: I. Riemannian ideas in mathematics and physics. II. General structures of mathematics. III. The idea of the Riemann surface. IV. Riemann and the calculus of variations. V. Riemann and complex geometry. VI. Riemann and number theory. The foreword gives a first sketch of some of Riemann's great ideas and their development up to recent times. The material of the book is so rich that it is impossible to give a detailed description of all the contents. Exemplarily, we will review the first part in more detail to give the reader an idea of the extensive material covered. Part I. Riemannian ideas in Mathematics and Physics. The author develops the important concepts of Riemannian geometry in six subsections: (1) Gauss inner curvature of surfaces (Theorema egregium; linear connections; Riemann surfaces; Levi-Civita connection; geodesics; Jacobi fields). (2) Sectional curvature. Space of constant curvature. Weyl's hypothesis (ovaloids including Weyl's existence problem; Hopf-Rinow theorem; symmetric spaces; the Bergman metric; Siegel half-space and disc; Jacobi fields and focal points). (3) Cohomology of Riemann spaces (theorems of de Rham, Hodge, Kodaira; heat equation methods; Euler-Poincaré characteristic; index theorem; Sobolev spaces; Weitzenböck formulas; Euler form, Hopf's index theorem; Poincaré duality, Künneth theorem; intersection numbers; degree of mapping; Morse index). (4) The Chern-Gauss-Bonnet theorem. (5) Curvature and topology, characteristic forms (Chern and Pontrjagin forms; Hirzebruch's signature theorem; the index theorem of Atiyah-Singer). (6) Kähler spaces, Bergmann metrics, Harish-Chandra-Cartan theorem, Siegel spaces (Calabi hypothesis and Calabi-Yau spaces; imbedding in projective spaces, Kodaira's theorem; homogeneous complex spaces and bounded domains; symmetric spaces; spectral geometry). In a similar way, the author describes the developments in other fields. Such a description requires a broad mathematical knowledge and a deep understanding of the mathematical development of quite different branches of mathematics. Thus, if we add some remarks to the author's work, we should keep in mind our recognition of his merits for writing this book. The book ends with 3 pages of ``Suggestions for further reading and an index. But there are no further references which we miss in a book which describes mathematical developments and thus also priorities; ``quotations are also without references. An example of such a ``quotation is the beginning of Chapter 4 in Part I, where the author writes: ``it is best to present the words of the master (Chern) himself, but what follows -- without any reference -- is a summary of, not a quotation from Chern's introduction to his famous paper [\textit{S.-S. Chern}, Ann. Math., II. Ser. 45, 747-752 (1944; Zbl 0060.38103)]. Historical remarks need references (either to original papers or to other historical surveys), in particular, when we acknowledge that there are important results in mathematics still missing a detailed history (compare, e.g., Maurin's historical remarks concerning the Gauss-Bonnet theorem on pp. 4 and 88-89 with \textit{M. Berger}'s in [Jahresber. DMV 100, No. 2, 45-208 (1998), p. 55]. We would like to add a second remark to the publisher's attention. While the printing, including the illustrations and the embellishment of the book, are of first class, we completely miss the editor's influence and care. The book was translated from Polish to English, a translation like this here should not have passed the editor's desk at Kluwer. The book is full of misleading, sometimes unconscious translations (example on p. 101: ``Physical intuitions always fertilized mathematicians and vice versa) and misprints. Famous mathematicians, places and journals appear in different spellings (for some of them there never appears a correct spelling); examples: Hirzennbruch (pp. 69 ff), Graver (means Grauert; p. 525), Nirenberger (pp. 29 ff), Weitzenbröch (pp. 67 ff), Getingen (means Göttingen, p. 177), Monaschefe (means Monatshefte, p. 83). Such a lack of editorial work is in deep contrast to the unbelievably high price of the book (US \$ 349).

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