Differential geometry has always been enriched by its interaction with physics. In this lecture I will attempt to give a guided tour through some topics in differential geometry which have recently benefited from this interaction. We will see that the key physical idea is that of supersymmetry, which although discovered for a different purpose altogether, provides a dictionary between geometry and physics, mostly in the form of string theory and its diverse gravity and field theory limits. The review will centre upon the following topics: holonomy groups, calibrated geometry, and mirror symmetry.
E-Mail: | jmf@maths.ed.ac.uk |