Differential and complex geometry are two central areas of mathematics with a long and intertwined history. This book, the first to provide a unified historical perspective of both subjects, explores their origins and developments from the sixteenth to the twentieth century. 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.

Leading experts explore the relation between periods and transcendental numbers, using a modern approach derived from the theory of motives.