It is gratifying to learn that there is new life in an old field that has been at the center of one's existence for over a quarter of a century. It is particularly pleasing that the subject of Riemann surfaces has attracted the attention of a new generation of mathematicians from (newly) adjacent fields (for example, those interested in hyperbolic manifolds and iterations of rational maps) and young physicists who have been convinced (certainly not by mathematicians) that compact Riemann surfaces may play an important role in their (string) universe. We hope that non-mathematicians as well as mathematicians (working in nearby areas to the central topic of this book) will also learn part of this subject for the sheer beauty and elegance of the material (work of Weierstrass, Jacobi, Riemann, Hilbert, Weyl) and as healthy exposure to the way (some) mathematicians write about mathematics.

　　本书为英文版。