In the spectrum of mathematics, graph theory which studies a mathe matical structure on a set of elements with a binary relation, as a recognized discipline, is a relative newcomer. In recent three decades the exciting and rapidly growing area of the subject abounds with new mathematical devel opments and significant applications to real-world problems. More and more colleges and universities have made it a required course for the senior or the beginning postgraduate students who are majoring in mathematics, computer science, electronics, scientific management and others. This book provides an introduction to graph theory for these students. The richness of theory and the wideness of applications make it impossi ble to include all topics in graph theory in a textbook for one semester. All materials presented in this book, however, I believe, are the most classical, fundamental, interesting and important. The method we deal with the mate rials is to particularly lay stress on digraphs, regarding undirected graphs as their special cases. My own experience from teaching out of the subject more than ten years at University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) shows that this treatment makes hardly the course di:fficult, but much more accords with the essence and the development trend of the subject.

Klappentext

This book considers a graph as a mathematical structure on a set of elements with a binary relation, and provides the most classical and important theory and application of graphs. It covers basic concepts, trees and graphic spaces, plane graphs and planar graphs, flows and connectivity, matchings and independent sets, coloring theory, graphs and groups. These topics, both theoretical and applied, are treated with some depth and with some suggestions for further reading. The treatment of material particularly lays stress on digraphs, the mutual connections among these topics and the equivalence of some well-known theorems. All theorems are stated clearly, together with full and concise proofs. A number of examples, more than 350 figures and more than 500 exercises are given to help the reader understand and examine the materials covered in the book.