About ten years ago, V.D. Goppa found a surprising
connection between the theory of algebraic curves over a
finite field and error-correcting codes. The aim of the
meeting "Algebraic Geometry and Coding Theory" was to give a
survey on the present state of research in this field and
related topics. The proceedings contain research papers on
several aspects of the theory, among them: Codes constructed
from special curves and from higher-dimensional varieties,
Decoding of algebraic geometric codes, Trace codes, Exponen-
tial sums, Fast multiplication in finite fields, Asymptotic
number of points on algebraic curves, Sphere packings.