Providing a detailed examination of the seminal contributions to differential and complex geometry up to the twentieth-century embedding theorems, this monograph includes valuable excerpts from the original documents, including works of Descartes, Fermat, Newton, Euler, Huygens, Gauss, Riemann, Abel, and Nash.

Suitable for beginning graduate students interested in differential, algebraic or complex geometry, this book will also appeal to more experienced readers.