Gideon Schechtman - Böcker

The proceedings of the Israeli GAFA seminar on Geometric Aspect of Functional Analysis during the years 2001-2002 follow the long tradition of the previous volumes. They continue to reflect the general trends of the Theory. Several papers deal with the slicing problem and its relatives. Some deal with the concentration phenomenon and related topics. In many of the papers there is a deep interplay between Probability and Convexity. The volume contains also a profound study on approximating convex sets by randomly chosen polytopes and its relation to floating bodies, an important subject in Classical Convexity Theory. All the papers of this collection are original research papers.

Vol. 1200 of the LNM series deals with the geometrical structure of finite dimensional normed spaces. One of the main topics is the estimation of the dimensions of euclidean and l^n p spaces which nicely embed into diverse finite-dimensional normed spaces. An essential method here is the concentration of measure phenomenon which is closely related to large deviation inequalities in Probability on the one hand, and to isoperimetric inequalities in Geometry on the other. The book contains also an appendix, written by M. Gromov, which is an introduction to isoperimetric inequalities on riemannian manifolds. Only basic knowledge of Functional Analysis and Probability is expected of the reader. The book can be used (and was used by the authors) as a text for a first or second graduate course. The methods used here have been useful also in areas other than Functional Analysis (notably, Combinatorics).

The Israeli GAFA seminar (on Geometric Aspect of Functional Analysis) during the years 2002-2003 follows the long tradition of the previous volumes. It reflects the general trends of the theory. Most of the papers deal with different aspects of the Asymptotic Geometric Analysis. In addition the volume contains papers on related aspects of Probability, classical Convexity and also Partial Differential Equations and Banach Algebras. There are also two expository papers on topics which proved to be very much related to the main topic of the seminar. One is Statistical Learning Theory and the other is Models of Statistical Physics. All the papers of this collection are original research papers.