The lectures concentrate on highlights in Combinatorial (ChaptersII and
III) and Number Theoretical (ChapterIV) Extremal Theory, in particular
on the solution of famous problems which were open for many decades.
However, the organization of the lectures in six chapters does neither
follow the historic developments nor the connections between ideas in
several cases. With the speci?ed auxiliary results in ChapterI on
Probability Theory, Graph Theory, etc., all chapters can be read and
taught independently of one another. In addition to the 16 lectures
organized in 6 chapters of the main part of the book, there is
supplementary material for most of them in the Appendix. In parti- lar,
there are applications and further exercises, research problems,
conjectures, and even research programs. The following books and reports
[B97], [ACDKPSWZ00], [A01], and [ABCABDM06], mostly of the
authors, are frequently cited in this book, especially in the Appendix,
and we therefore mark them by short labels as [B], [N], [E], and
[G]. We emphasize that there are also "Exercises" in [B], a "Problem
Section" with contributions by several authors on pages 1063-1105 of
[G], which are often of a combinatorial nature, and "Problems and
Conjectures" on pages 172-173 of [E].