Author Description

This text is an introduction to the representation theory of the symmetric group from three different points of view: via general representation theory, via combinatorial algorithms, and via symmetric functions. It is the only book to deal with all three aspects of this subject at once. The style of presentation is relaxed yet rigorous and the prerequisites have been kept to a minimum--undergraduate courses in linear algebra and group theory will suffice. And this is a very active area of current research, so the text will appeal to graduate students and mathematicians in other specialties interested in finding out about this field. On the other hand, a number of the combinatorial results presented have never appeared in book form before and so the volume will serve as a good reference for teachers already working in this area. Among these results are Haiman's theory of dual equivalence and the beautiful Novelli-Pak-Stoyanovskii proof of the hook formula (the latter being new to the second edition). In addition, there is a new chapter on applications of materials from the first edition. Bruce Sagan is Professor of Mathematics at Michigan State University and has authored over 50 papers in combinatorics and its relation to algebra and topology. When he is not proving theorems, he is playing folk music from Scandinavian and the Balkans on the fiddle and its ethnic relatives.