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Reader Q&ABe the first to ask a question about Comprehensive Introduction to Differential Geometry, Complete Five-Volume Set Community Reviewsit was amazing Average rating 5.00 · Start your review of Comprehensive Introduction to Differential Geometry, Complete Five-Volume Set Michael David Spivak is a mathematician specializing in differential geometry, an expositor of mathematics, and the founder of Publish-or-Perish Press. He is the author of the five-volume Comprehensive Introduction to Differential Geometry. He received a
Ph.D. from Princeton University under the supervision of John Milnor in 1964. His book Calculus takes a very rigorous and theoretical approach to His book Calculus takes a very rigorous and theoretical approach to introductory calculus. It is used in calculus courses, particularly those with a pure mathematics emphasis, at many universities. Spivak's book Calculus on Manifolds (often referred to as little Spivak) is also rather infamous as being one of the most difficult undergraduate mathematics textbooks. News & InterviewsNeed another excuse to treat yourself to a new book this week? We've got you covered with the buzziest new releases of the day. To create our... Welcome back. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Roughly:
Your calculus background should certainly involve real proofs of things like the intermediate value theorem, and the extreme value theorem. Your multivariable course should have proven the implicit and inverse function theorems. And if you'd heard of Sard's theorem (Milnor's Topology from the Differentiable Viewpoint might be a good reference), that'd do no harm either. To be honest: I'd recommend reading (and doing most of the exercises) in Barrett O'Neil's book "Elementary Differential Geometry" as a first step. It's all for surfaces in 3-space, but it'll ground you in the main ideas so that much of Spivak will just seem like reasonably natural generalizations of what you've already learned. Oh...and all this is for Volume 1. Later volumes certainly rely on a bit more abstract algebra. |