Geometry, Topology and Physics

The workshop attracted more than 100 participants from various centres in Brazil, the US, Asia and Europe, ranging in experience from graduate students to leading experts in their field. The program covered topics in geometry, topology and physics, with special emphasis on harmonic maps, Kahler and contact geometry, gauge theory, low dimensional topology, and Seiberg-Witten theory. The contribution to this volume centre around a surprisingly deep interaction between quantum field theory from mathematical physics on the one hand and 4-dimensional topology on the other. Recent work by Witten and Seiberg makes this part of mathematics even more interesting and more powerful, which can be seen from articles in this volume.