Basic properties, homotopy classification, and characteristic classes of fibre bundles have become an essential part of graduate mathematical education for students in geometry and mathematical physics. The new edition of this text includes two additional chapters, one on the gauge group of a bundle and the other on the differential forms representing characteristic classes of complex vector bundles on manifolds.

Fibre bundles, now an integral part of differential geometry, are also of great importance in modern physics--such as in gauge theory. This book, a succinct introduction to the subject by renown mathematician Norman Steenrod, was the first to present the subject systematically. It begins with a general introduction to bundles, including such topics as differentiable manifolds and covering spaces. The author then provides brief surveys of advanced topics, such as homotopy theory and cohomology theory, before using them to study further properties of fibre bundles. The result is a classic and timeless work of great utility that will appeal to serious mathematicians and theoretical physicists alike.

The notion of a fibre bundle first arose out of questions posed in the 1930s on the topology and geometry of manifolds. By the year 1950 the defini tion of fibre bundle had been clearly formulated, the homotopy classifica tion of fibre bundles achieved, and the theory of characteristic classes of fibre bundles developed by several mathematicians, Chern, Pontrjagin, Stiefel, and Whitney. Steenrod's book, which appeared in 1950, gave a coherent treatment of the subject up to that time. About 1955 Milnor gave a construction of a universal fibre bundle for any topological group. This construction is also included in Part I along with an elementary proof that the bundle is universal. During the five years from 1950 to 1955, Hirzebruch clarified the notion of characteristic class and used it to prove a general Riemann-Roch theorem for algebraic varieties. This was published in his Ergebnisse Monograph. A systematic development of characteristic classes and their applications to manifolds is given in Part III and is based on the approach of Hirze bruch as modified by Grothendieck.

Fibre bundles, now an integral part of differential geometry, are also of great importance in modern physics--such as in gauge theory. This book, a succinct introduction to the subject by renown mathematician Norman Steenrod, was the first to present the subject systematically. It begins with a general introduction to bundles, including such topics as differentiable manifolds and covering spaces. The author then provides brief surveys of advanced topics, such as homotopy theory and cohomology theory, before using them to study further properties of fibre bundles. The result is a classic and timeless work of great utility that will appeal to serious mathematicians and theoretical physicists alike.

This book provides a systematic presentation of the mathematical foundation of modern physics with applications particularly within classical mechanics and the theory of relativity. Written to be self-contained, Smooth Manifolds and Fibre Bundles with Applications to Theoretical Physics provides complete and rigorous proofs of all the results presented within. Among the themes illustrated in the book are differentiable manifolds, differential forms, fiber bundles and differential geometry with non-trivial applications especially within the general theory of relativity. The emphasis is upon a systematic and logical construction of the mathematical foundations. It can be used as a textbook for a pure mathematics course in differential geometry, assuming the reader has a good understanding of basic analysis, linear algebra and point set topology. The book will also appeal to students of theoretical physics interested in the mathematical foundation of the theories.