Title: Modern Graph Theory Author(s): Bela Bollobas Pages: 408 Publisher: Springer; 1st ed. Publication date: 1998 Language: English Format: DJVU ISBN-10: 0387984887 ISBN-13: Description: The time has now come when graph theory should be part of the education of every serious student of mathematics and computer science, both for its own sake and to enhance the appreciation of mathematics as a whole. This book is an in-depth account of graph theory, written with such a student in mind; it reflects the current state of the subject and emphasizes connections with other branches of pure mathematics. The volume grew out of the author's earlier book, Graph Theory -- An Introductory Course, but its length is well over twice that of its predecessor, allowing it to reveal many exciting new developments in the subject. Recognizing that graph theory is one of several courses competing for the attention of a student, the book contains extensive descriptive passages designed to convey the flavor of the subject and to arouse interest. In addition to a modern treatment of the classical areas of graph theory such as coloring, matching, extremal theory, and algebraic graph theory, the book presents a detailed account of newer topics, including Szemer\'edi's Regularity Lemma and its use, Shelah's extension of the Hales-Jewett Theorem, the precise nature of the phase transition in a random graph process, the connection between electrical networks and random walks on graphs, and the Tutte polynomial and its cousins in knot theory. In no other branch of mathematics is it as vital to tackle and solve challenging exercises in order to master the subject. To this end, the book contains an unusually large number of well thought-out exercises: over 600 in total. Although some are straightforward, most of them are substantial, and others will stretch even the most able reader.
Reviews
"...This book is likely to become a classic, and it deserves to be on the shelf of everyone working in graph theory or even remotely related areas, from graduate student to active researcher."--MATHEMATICAL REVIEWS
Review:
I have so many good things to say about this book...
This book is absolutely precious! It is a little bit weird, but you can get used to it. This book's strongest points are that it is easy to jump around in it, and it contains a wealth of material. It also has incredible numbers of exercises, of greatly varying difficulty levels.
The author's clarity of writing comes out particularly well in the later chapters. In particular, my favourite parts are the discussion of algebraic graph theory, and the discussion of the Tutte polynomial and connections with knot theory. There is also some beautiful use of linear algebra in various parts of the book; some rather strange and difficult results are presented very clearly.
I think this book would be a great purchase for anyone wanting to engage in some self-study in graph theory, or anyone wanting a good reference on graph theory, or anyone wanting to work some hard problems (or easy problems) in graph theory, or someone choosing a textbook for a graph theory course...or...in short, anyone who wants anything to do with graph theory at all.
Review:
Good Introduction, too many typos
I am, what Prof. Bollobas would call a hobby mathematician. Some popular science book arouse my interest in graph theory, and the author of that popular science book recommended this book. I feel it was a vey good introduction to the subject, even though the proofs become challenging at times. His motivation for the subject is always concise but precise, one cannot but notice, that a master of the subject is writing about it.
The only distraction are the enormous number of typographical errors: I counted over 60, and this in a third corrected printing!?!
Review:
Excellent in content, but somewhat challenging in narrative
Bela Bollobas has the rare gift of having both deep mathematical insights, and the ability to eloquently communicate them in a way that is accessible to the average graduate student. In his book "Modern Graph Theory", Bollobas covers just about every exciting a
Title: Modern Graph Theory