The Foundations of Topological Graph Theory

This is a book on topological graph theory written from a purely combinatorial viewpoint. The aim is to develop a rigorous approach to the foundations of the subject. The book should therefore appeal to graduate students and researchers in topological graph theory. The basic tool used is the idea of a 3-graph which is a cubic graph endowed with a proper edge colouring in three colours. A special case of a 3-graph, called a gem, provides a model for a cellular imbedding of a graph in a surface. Thus theorems about imbeddings of graphs become theorems about gems. In the book we show that many of these theorems generalise to theorems about 3-graphs.