Bücher der Reihe Universitext: Tracts in Mathematics

This book is an outgrowth of lectures given on several occasions at Chalmers University of Technology and Goteborg University during the last ten years. As opposed to most introductory books on complex analysis, this one as- sumes that the reader has previous knowledge of basic real analysis. This makes it possible to follow a rather quick route through the most fundamen- tal material on the subject in order to move ahead to reach some classical highlights (such as Fatou theorems and some Nevanlinna theory), as well as some more recent topics (for example, the corona theorem and the HI_ BMO duality) within the time frame of a one-semester course. Sections 3 and 4 in Chapter 2, Sections 5 and 6 in Chapter 3, Section 3 in Chapter 5, and Section 4 in Chapter 7 were not contained in my original lecture notes and therefore might be considered special topics. In addition, they are completely independent and can be omitted with no loss of continuity. The order of the topics in the exposition coincides to a large degree with historical developments. The first five chapters essentially deal with theory developed in the nineteenth century, whereas the remaining chapters contain material from the early twentieth century up to the 1980s. Choosing methods of presentation and proofs is a delicate task. My aim has been to point out connections with real analysis and harmonic anal- ysis, while at the same time treating classical complex function theory.

Complex dynamics is today very much a focus of interest. Though several fine expository articles were available, by P. Blanchard and by M. Yu. Lyubich in particular, until recently there was no single source where students could find the material with proofs. For anyone in our position, gathering and organizing the material required a great deal of work going through preprints and papers and in some cases even finding a proof. We hope that the results of our efforts will be of help to others who plan to learn about complex dynamics and perhaps even lecture. Meanwhile books in the field a. re beginning to appear. The Stony Brook course notes of J. Milnor were particularly welcome and useful. Still we hope that our special emphasis on the analytic side will satisfy a need. This book is a revised and expanded version of notes based on lectures of the first author at UCLA over several \Vinter Quarters, particularly 1986 and 1990. We owe Chris Bishop a great deal of gratitude for supervising the production of course notes, adding new material, and making computer pictures. We have used his computer pictures, and we will also refer to the attractive color graphics in the popular treatment of H. -O. Peitgen and P. Richter. We have benefited from discussions with a number of colleagues, and from suggestions of students in both our courses.