100%(2)100% found this document useful (2 votes) 1K views248 pagesD. Laugwitz Differential and Riemannian Geometry 1965
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DIFFERENTIAL
AND
RIEMANNIAN
GEOMETRY
by
DETLEF LAUGWITZ
‘Professor of Mathematics
Technische Hochschule Darmstadt
Germany
Translated by
Fritz Steinhardt
The City College
The City University of New York
New York
1965
@
ACADEMIC PRESS New York San Francisco London
A Subsidiary of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers CopyriGHTt © 1965, py ACADEMIC Press, INC.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM,
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ACADEMIC PRESS, INC.
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United Kingdom Edition published by
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Lrprary OF ConcREss CATALOG CaRD NUMBER: 64-21670
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE GERMAN LANGUAGE UNDER THE
TITLE Differentialgeometrieé AND COPYRIGHTED IN 1960
BY B. G. TEUBNER, VERLAGSGESELLSCHAFT, STUTTGART. Preface to the German Edition
This textbook is intended to be an introduction to classical differential
geometry as well as to the tensor calculus and to Riemannian geometry.
The material it contains should fit into a two-semester course at the upper
college or first-year graduate level. A systematic development has been
aimed at, but the author also believes hopefully that none of the more
important special theorems will be found missing. To be sure, Chapter I
on the Theory of Curves serves mainly as a preparation for the later chapters.
Thus the reader interested especially in the theory of curves for its own sake
is also referred to any of the numerous textbooks on this particular sub-
discipline.*
The tensor calculus has been used consistently. Its notation is introduced
even in the theory of surfaces (Chapter II), so that for the subsequent
definition of tensors and their operations (in Chapter III), concrete instances
are immediately available. The advantages of the tensor calculus lie in
its great generality, in the greater transparency of its notation as compared
to the Gaussian notation still in frequent use, and in the immediate
applicability to the special problem of formulas written in tensor notation.
The author does not agree with the frequently voiced objection that equa-
tions in tensor notation are not “‘written in invariant form’ (see III 8.5).
For lack of space, no account is given of the calculus of differential forms,
which is an occasionally useful but not sufficiently general abbreviated
form of a part of the tensor calculus. However, anyone who has acquired
a sufficient familiarity with the tensor calculus will be able to handle this.
Also in Chapter III, we treat the elements of Riemannian geometry,
which owes its existence to the requirements of a systematic development
of the intrinsic (inner) geometry of surfaces. Consequently there is still much
material on the theory of surfaces to be found in Chapter III, as well as in
the following Chapter IV. In the latter will be found some results that
have not previously been available in textbooks, or in book form generally.
* For instance, Volume I of the two-volume work by G. Scheffers: “Anwendungen
der Differential- und Integralrechnung auf Geometrie,” 3rd ed., Berlin and Leipzig, 1923;
or the works of J. Edwards: “Differential Calculus,” 2nd ed., London, 1896, and
Volume I of his treatise on the “Integral Calculus with Applications,”’ 2nd ed., London,
1930 (reprinted, New York, 1954).
