Knots in Hellas '98 : proceedings of the International Conference on Knot Theory and its Ramifications : European Cultural Centre of Delphi Greece, 7-15 August 1998

Proceedings of the International Conference on Knot Theory and Its Ramifications held at the European Cultural Center of Delphi, August 7-15, 2000. The conference provided a forum for exchange between experts on the many different aspects of knot theory. There have been exciting developments in the area of knot theory in recent years. They include Thurston's work on geometric structures on 3-manifolds (e.g. knot complements), Gordon-Luecke work on surgeries on knots, Jones'work on invariants of links in S3, and advances in the theory of invariants of 3-manifolds based on Jones- and Vassiliev-type invariants of links. Jones ideas and Thurston's idea are connected by the following path: hyperbolic structures, PSL(2,C) representations, character varieties, quantization of the coordinate ring of the variety to skein modules (i.e. Kauffman, bracket skein module), and finally quantum invariants of 3-manifolds. This proceedings volume covers all those exciting topics. There were many developments in the area of knot theory in the 1990s. They include Thurston's work on geometric structures on 3-manifolds, Gordon-Luecke's work on surgeries on knots, and Jones' work on invariants of links in S3. This proceedings volume covers all those topics.