Overview

The lectures concentrate on highlights in Combinatorial (ChaptersII and III) and Number Theoretical (ChapterIV) Extremal Theory, in particular on the solution of famous problems which were open for many decades. However, the organization of the lectures in six chapters does neither follow the historic developments nor the connections between ideas in several cases. With the speci?ed auxiliary results in ChapterI on Probability Theory, Graph Theory, etc., all chapters can be read and taught independently of one another. In addition to the 16 lectures organized in 6 chapters of the main part of the book, there is supplementary material for most of them in the Appendix. In parti- lar, there are applications and further exercises, research problems, conjectures, and even research programs. The following books and reports [B97], [ACDKPSWZ00], [A01], and [ABCABDM06], mostly of the authors, are frequently cited in this book, especially in the Appendix, and we therefore mark them by short labels as [B], [N], [E], and [G]. We emphasize that there are also "Exercises" in [B], a "Problem Section" with contributions by several authors on pages 1063-1105 of [G], which are often of a combinatorial nature, and "Problems and Conjectures" on pages 172-173 of [E].