Krichever and Novikov introduced certain classes of infinite dimensional Lie algebras to extend the Virasoro algebra and its related algebras to Riemann surfaces of higher genus. The author of this book generalized and extended them to a more general setting needed by the applications. Examples of applications are Conformal Field Theory, Wess-Zumino-Novikov-Witten models, moduli space problems, integrable systems, Lax operator algebras, and deformation theory of Lie algebra. Furthermore they constitute an important class of infinite dimensional Lie algebras which due to their geometric origin are still manageable.

This book gives an introduction for the newcomer to this exciting field of ongoing research in mathematics and will be a valuable source of reference for the experienced researcher. Beside the basic constructions and results also applications are presented.

Martin Schlichenmaier, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg.