Customer Reviews

Elementary Differential Geometry, Revised 2nd Edition, Second Edition

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I worked through the first edition of this book some years back. After finishing this book I was ready for more abstract treatments of Riemannian Geometry. For example, having seen covariant derivatives on 2-surfaces embedded in R^3 motivates the abstract definition of connections on manifolds.

Chapter 1 is a decent introduction to pullbacks and pushforwards of differntial forms and tangent vectors respectively. In fact, all the subsequent geometry is based on pullbacks and pushforwards.This itself motivates the more abstract definition of a differentiable manifold with its coordinate charts. True,tangent vectors are not described in the most abstract fashion (e.g. as derivations on the algebra of functions) but this is not appropriate for a first course.

Chapter 2 describes the language of frame field and connection forms and derives the Frenet-Serret equations in terms of moving frames and structure equations. We associate this with the methods of Elie Cartan, who used moving frames in a systematic manner.

Chapter 3 deals with isometries; frankly speaking I never understood the raison d'etre for such a long chapter on such a topic.

Chapter 4 discusses coordinate patches. Again, this is thoroughly modern, and you won't find this in Struik or Kreyszig. The idea of piecing together coordinate patches to get geometric or topological information is a twentieth-century conception.

Chapter 5 introduces the Shape Operator, which is subsequently used in Chapter 6 to derive the equations of surface theory. This is really moving frames again, in another guise.

Chapter 7 finally tries to put this in a more abstract setting by defining abstract surfaces with an intrinsically defined covariant derivative.Holonomy and the Gauss-Bonnet theorem are discussed.

After reading this book, one would be equipped to handle do Carmo's book on Riemannian geometry, or O'Neill's book on Semi-Riemanninan geometry, or the more recent book by Lee, again on Riemannian geometry.

My first encounter with this book was during the academic year of 2000-2001, when it was used as the main text for an upper division course on differential geometry. The class --taught by a distinguished scholar-- was only meant to be a brief excursion into the realm of continuous math, beyond analysis and topology. After finishing the term however, I decided to change direction and as time went on, I drifted more and more towards geometry as the field of further concentration. The original second edition (from 1997) contained numerous typos, but luckily, the revised 2006 issue takes care of these and also streamlines the section numbering formats which had made the referencing and following through with the material a bit cumbersome. As some of the other reviewers have mentioned, the emphasis here is on the low (= 2 and 3) dimensional geometry, formulated in the language of differential forms (Cartan's early 20th century approach).

Within the eight chapters of the book (seven in the 1966 edition), the reader is first introduced to some preliminaries such as tangent vectors, directional derivatives, and differential forms. In chapter two, the author presents the Frenet frame formulas, covariant derivatives, connection forms, and Cartan's structural equations, which are generalizations of the Frenet frame formulas for surfaces. In chapters three and four, there is a healthy dose of Euclidean geometry and calculus on surfaces. In chapter five, discussion is on the study of the shape operators and normal and Gaussian curvatures, where also some useful computational examples have been presented. Geometry of surfaces is the subject of chapter six, where the crucial Gauss' egregium theorem is proved, and in chapter seven students are introduced to the basics of the Riemannian geometry, culminating in the famous Gauss-Bonnet theorem. In chapter eight (which is highly topological) complete surfaces, covering spaces, Jacobi fields, and the subject of classification of surfaces are explored. The appendices include help on using popular computer algebra systems (with updates in the latest revised edition), and another appendix providing solutions to many of the odd-numbered exercises in the book.

Please note that the author leaves out a discussion of several essential tools, for example, the Schwarz-Christoffel symbols, tensors, and Lie derivatives. The exposition does not fully explore some other important topics such as the first and second fundamental forms, and parallel translation, which only show up in the exercises. Then again, perhaps to keep the level of exposition elemantary and the size limited, Dr. O'Neill has preferred to skip some topics. One remedy is to back his text up with Manfredo Do Carmo's 1976 classic, which is mathematically more rigorous, and covers more of the above-mentioned topics. Afterwards, one can certainly continue the study of the essentials by reading other advanced material such as William Boothby's "An Introduction to Differentiable Manifolds and Riemannian Geometry". There is also a somewhat obscure title by Richard W. Sharpe with the title "Differential Geometry: Cartan's Generalization of Klein's Erlangen Program", from the Springer-Verlag GTM series that's worth checking into. Finally, other elemantary-level sources to keep in mind for a beginning student are the recent texts by Andrew Pressley (2001) and Wolfgang Kuhnel (2002) both available on amazon.com's catalog.

[Remark: The author of this book who was a retired professor at UCLA at the time, passed away in Summer 2011.]

If you are looking for abstraction with little in the way of intuition I suggest Conlan " differential manifolds"

If you are an applied mathematician or physicist this book is for you.

I have always beleived that to truly grasp mathematics one must be provided with a reason for WHY things are the way they are and WHAT IDEAS the expression must express. This is best done with examples and exercises.

I digress.

The book restricts is exposition to two and three dimensions. Some of the topics can readily be bootstrapped to higher dimensions.

The book starts with basic ideas of curve, directional derivative and tangent vector in Euclidean space with a sprinkling of differential forms to wet the appetite.

It then moves into the notion of frame fields along curves resulting in the Frenet formulas which express how the frame fields change along the curve. These are expressed in terms of the frame field themselves giving ideas of curvature and torsion.

The book then abstracts these concepts to show how we can talk about change of frame fields along arbritrary directions not just along the curve. The tools used to do this are the covariant derivative and connection forms which can then be used to develop connection equations ( abstracted analogue of frenet formulas ) and then the cartan structural equations.

The book talks about isometries and defines euclidean geometry as those properties preserved by isometries. It then abstracts once again to surfaces in R3 using patches and appropriate conditions on the overlap without introducing manifolds although these are briefly mentioned later.

We then see how calculus in euclidean space can be adapted to surfaces using these patches. The corresponding concepts of function, differentiability and tangent vectors on these objects is introduced. Forms on these surfaces are introduced and their application to integration theory on these surfaces is developed showing how forms on the surface are " pulled back" to euclidean space using the idea of differential of a map and integrated there. The integration gives the volume ( area ) of that surface. Stokes theorem is introduced.

We now move into the idea of shape operators on the surface and show how these describe how the normal vector on the surface move in various directions giving ideas of mean and gaussian curvature . We see a very nice interplay of algebraic analysis leading to a geometric analysis.

The book then deals with studying geometrical properties on surfaces using the Cartan methods described earlier.

We then see how to define intrinsic geometry of any surface. Namely those properties of the surface that are preserved by isometries. From the definition of isometry we see that these rely on on the concepts of tangent vector and inner products. Shape operators and mean curvature are not intrinsic.

We now study the geometry of surfaces specifically the intrinsic geometry without reference to an imbedding space ( R3). An abstract "surface" is endowed with an inner product. A different inner product gives a different geometry. We talk about gaussian curvature and covariant derivative which are intrinsic.

Geodesics are introduced as is the gauss bonnet theorem which relates a geometric property to a topological one.

The book concludes with a chapter on global properties ( 2 d surfaces ) especially how gaussian curvature influences geodesics and how the two completely determine the geometry of the surface.

This book is, I suppose, an acceptable elementary introduction to the topic. However, I found that several important proofs were annoyingly incomplete, with the tag "the proof is too difficult to go into here." Many times, the only ingredient needed to complete the proof is the Inverse Function Theorem or the Implicit Function Theorem, which students taking differential geometry should know. Also, and more significantly, the exercises are riddled with typos; some are minor, others make the exercise incomprehensible. A final minor quibble is that the author uses a cumbersome numbering system for his sections. In sum: If your mathematical background is at least as strong as that of a senior honors undergraduate mathematics major, look elsewhere (perhaps "Differential Geometry of Curves and Surfaces," by do Carmo). If not, and you still would like an introduction to the field, this book may foot the bill--just beware of the typos in the exercises!

It's easy to read with enough examples. Suitable for self study after your advanced calculus (inverse function thm/implicit function thm should be covered here) and linear algebra classes. Tons of exercises will help you familiarize yourself with the calculation in low dimension. (Do I love the exercises on minimal surfaces and surfaces of revolution in chapter 5 and 6!) Most of them are workable. This is the strength of the book. Since the author limits the material to low dimensions, some definitions are a bit misleading, such as the definition of exterior derivative of 1-form in chapter 4, where another term to be added happens to be zero. I think there is a big gap in style and level of difficulty between this book and author's "Semi-Riemannian Geometry: With Applications To Relativity".

After this book, probably you want to read Hicks' "Notes on differential geometry", if you can find a copy in some lib. Darling's "Differential Forms and Connections" is also highly recommended. It is modern but not much topological stuff.
Company it with Warner's "Foundations of differentiable manifolds and Lie groups" for topology also much higher algebra.

Because this book has made it into a 2nd edition should say enough (in this area of study). The book has wonderful notation that makes sense and problems that start out easy and go up from there! There is also extensive use of math computer programs (mathmatica & maple) for problems and examples. Wonderful book & one of my favorite undergrad texts!

This is an excellent introduction to differential geometry. It has numerous exercises with answers in the book which make it appropriate for self study. All that is needed is some familiarity with linear algebra and vector calculus, but even this book is self contained enough that even without exposure to either of those it is still approachable. I think that after working through this book a student will be well prepared to take on a more advanced book like Riemannian Geometry by do Carmo or Differential Geometry by Kuhnel.

I found the approach in this book on the stuff touched on in most diff. geometry books at the level I was hunting for (I'm a mech. engineering major) very nice. I liked the notation used and could follow it very well. Everything I've seen so far is in E3 which I like for intuitive grasp. I feel like this is one of those bridging books to be able to understand higher level abstract books, especially if you are trying to learn on your own. The first 50 or so pages hammer out pretty much anything I've seen at the general level in other books of this subject, and I think this book does it better than most. There are also some solutions (well, just answers) in the back.

"This book is an elementary account of the geometry of curves and surfaces.
It is written for students who have completed standard courses in calculus and linear algebra, and its aim is to INTRODUCE SOME OF THE MAIN IDEAS OF DIFFERENTIAL GEOMETRY....."
[from the preface to the second edition, by Barrett O'Neill]

I like this book very much because it helps me frequently when I need to remember some definitions or formulas, but I think it could be improved if some topics were treated in a more abstract way, as all the material on differential forms, for example.