A First Course in Geometric Topology and Differential Geometry (Modern Birkhäuser Classics)

The uniqueness of this text in combining geometric topology and differential geometry lies in its unifying thread: the notion of a surface. With numerous illustrations, exercises and examples, the student comes to understand the relationship between modern axiomatic approach and geometric intuition. The text is kept at a concrete level, 'motivational' in nature, avoiding abstractions. A number of intuitively appealing definitions and theorems concerning surfaces in the topological, polyhedral, and smooth cases are presented from the geometric view, and point set topology is restricted to subsets of Euclidean spaces. The treatment of differential geometry is classical, dealing with surfaces in R3 . The material here is accessible to math majors at the junior/senior level.