The Theory of Singularities and its Applications (Lezione Fermiane)

This book describes those singularities encountered in different branches of mathematics. The distinguished mathematician, Vladimir Arnold, avoids giving difficult proofs of all the results in order to provide the reader with a concise and accessible overview of the many guises and areas in which singularities appear. Some of these areas include geometry and optics, optimal control theory and algebraic geometry, reflection groups theory, dynamical systems theory, and the classical and quantum catastrophe theory.