The Best Algebraic Geometry Books of All Time

A comprehensive, self-contained treatment presenting general results of the theory. Establishes a geometric intuition and a working facility with specific geometric practices. Emphasizes applications through the study of interesting examples and the development of computational tools. Coverage ranges from analytic to geometric. Treats basic techniques and results of complex manifold theory, focusing on results applicable to projective varieties, and includes discussion of the theory of Riemann surfaces and algebraic curves, algebraic surfaces and the quadric line complex as well as special topics in complex manifolds.

This book introduces the reader to modern algebraic geometry. It presents Grothendieck's technically demanding language of schemes that is the basis of the most important developments in the last fifty years within this area. A systematic treatment and motivation of the theory is emphasized, using concrete examples to illustrate its usefulness. Several examples from the realm of Hilbert modular surfaces and of determinantal varieties are used methodically to discuss the covered techniques. Thus the reader experiences that the further development of the theory yields an ever better understanding of these fascinating objects.

The text is complemented by many exercises that serve to check the comprehension of the text, treat further examples, or give an outlook on further results. The volume at hand is an introduction to schemes. To get started, it requires only basic knowledge in abstract algebra and topology. Essential facts from commutative algebra are assembled in an appendix. It will be complemented by a second volume on the cohomology of schemes. For the second edition, several mistakes and many smaller errors and misprints have been corrected.

This book can form the basis of a second course in algebraic geometry. As motivation, it takes concrete questions from enumerative geometry and intersection theory, and provides intuition and technique, so that the student develops the ability to solve geometric problems. The authors explain key ideas, including rational equivalence, Chow rings, Schubert calculus and Chern classes, and readers will appreciate the abundant examples, many provided as exercises with solutions available online. Intersection is concerned with the enumeration of solutions of systems of polynomial equations in several variables.

It has been an active area of mathematics since the work of Leibniz. Chasles' nineteenth-century calculation that there are 3264 smooth conic plane curves tangent to five given general conics was an important landmark, and was the inspiration behind the title of this book. Such computations were motivation for Poincaré's development of topology, and for many subsequent theories, so that intersection theory is now a central topic of modern mathematics.