These notes approximately transcribe a 15-week course on symplectic geometry I taught at UC Berkeley in the Fall of 1997. The course at Berkeley was greatly inspired in content and style by Victor Guillemin, whose masterly teaching of beautiful courses on topics related to s- plectic geometry at MIT, I was lucky enough to experience as a graduate student. I am very thankful to him! That course also borrowed from the 1997 Park City summer courses on symplectic geometry and topology, and from many talks and discussions of the symplectic geometry group at MIT. Among the regular participants in the MIT - formal symplectic seminar 93-96, I would like to acknowledge the contributions of Allen Knutson, Chris Woodward, David Metzler, Eckhard Meinrenken, Elisa Prato, Eugene Lerman, Jonathan Weitsman, Lisa Jeffrey, Reyer Sjamaar, Shaun Martin, Stephanie Singer, Sue Tolman and, last but not least, Yael Karshon. Thanks to everyone sitting in Math 242 in the Fall of 1997 for all the c- ments they made, and especially to those who wrote notes on the basis of which I was better able to reconstruct what went on: Alexandru Scorpan, Ben Davis, David Martinez,DonBarkauskas,EzraMiller,HenriqueBursztyn,John-PeterLund,Laura De Marco, Olga Radko, Peter P? rib' ?k, Pieter Collins, Sarah Packman, Stephen Bigelow, Susan Harrington, Tolga Etgu .. and Yi Ma.
Reviews

"I find this to be both the best introduction to symplectic geometry as well as a model for how to introduce any field of study. ... one feels the hand of a master in the text's homework sets: concrete, illustrative, and enhancing the material presented. ... For an upper-level undergraduate or beginning graduate student, Lectures on Symplectic Geometry remains, in my opinion, an ideal starting point into an exciting, active and growing area of mathematics." (Andrew McInerney, MAA Reviews, June, 2018)

From the reviews of the first printing

Over the years, there have been several books written to serve as an introduction to symplectic geometry and topology, [...] The text under review here fits well within this tradition, providing a useful and effective synopsis of the basics of symplectic geometry and possibly serving as the springboard for a prospective researcher.

The material covered here amounts to the "usual suspects" of symplectic geometryand topology. From an introductory chapter of symplectic forms and symplectic algebra, the book moves on to many of the subjects that serve as the basis for current research:symplectomorphisms, Lagrangian submanifolds, the Moser theorems, Darboux-Moser-Weinstein theory, almost complex structures, Kahler structures, Hamiltonian mechanics, symplectic reduction, etc.

The text is written in a clear, easy-to-follow style, that is most appropriate in mathematical sophistication for second-year graduate students; [...].

This text had its origins in a 15-week course that the author taught at UC Berkeley. There are some nice passages where the author simply lists some known results and some well-known conjectures, much as one would expect to see in a good lecture on the same subject. Particularly eloquent is the author's discussion of the compact examples and counterexamples of symplectic, almost complex, complex and Kahler manifolds.

Throughout the text, she uses specific, well-chosen examples to illustrate the results. In the initial chapter, she provides a detailed section on the classical example of the syrnplectic structure of the cotangent bundle of a manifold.

Showing a good sense of pedagogy, the author often leaves these examples as well-planned homework assignments at the end of some of the sections. [...] In all of these cases, the author gives the reader a chance to illustrate and understand the interesting results of each section, rather than relegating the tedious but needed results to the reader.

Mathematical Reviews 2002i

Book Information
ISBN 9783540421955
Author Ana Cannas da Silva
Format Paperback
Page Count 220
Imprint Springer-Verlag Berlin and Heidelberg GmbH & Co. K
Publisher Springer-Verlag Berlin and Heidelberg GmbH & Co. KG