The book contains a very concrete introduction to binary coding theory and new applications of Nikulin's theory of primitive embeddings of lattices. The book contains also a thorough investigation of cubic hypersurfaces and their singularities, and the associated discriminant surfaces, providing new constructions for surfaces of degree 5 and 6 with the maximal number of nodes. A surprising relation is found between the Barth 65 nodal surface and the Doro-Hall graph. The book is addressed to algebraic geometers and experts of coding theory. It is also meant to be a source of many beautiful classical constructions, due to Kummer, Togliatti and others, which should be of interest to graduate students who want to get to know classical projective geometry.
Fabrizio Catanese is a leading algebraic geometer, member of the Accademia dei Lincei, the Goettingen Academy, and the Academia Europaea. He has been a Full Professor at the University of Pisa, Italy (1980-1996), at Goettingen University (1997-2001), and since 2002, at Bayreuth University (Germany). He has been leading several research projects, and among others, an European Project Science, a DFG Graduiertenkolleg, a DFG Schwerpunkt Program, a DFG Forschergruppe, an ERC Advanced Grant, in which about 30 students and 30 Postdocs have been participating.