This text exposes the basic features of cohomology of sheaves and its applications. The general theory of sheaves is very limited and no essential result is obtainable without turn ing to particular classes of topological spaces. The most satis factory general class is that of locally compact spaces and it is the study of such spaces which occupies the central part of this text. The fundamental concepts in the study of locally compact spaces is cohomology with compact support and a particular class of sheaves,the so-called soft sheaves. This class plays a double role as the basic vehicle for the internal theory and is the key to applications in analysis. The basic example of a soft sheaf is the sheaf of smooth functions on ~n or more generally on any smooth manifold. A rather large effort has been made to demon strate the relevance of sheaf theory in even the most elementary analysis. This process has been reversed in order to base the fundamental calculations in sheaf theory on elementary analysis.
