David Masser is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Basel, Switzerland. He started his career with Alan Baker, which gave him a grounding in modern transcendence theory and began his fascination with the method of auxiliary polynomials. His subsequent interest in applying the method to areas outside transcendence, which involved mainly problems of zero estimates, culminated in his works with Gisbert Wüstholz on isogeny and polarization estimates for abelian varieties, for which he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2005. This expertise proved beneficial in his more recent works with Umberto Zannier on problems of unlikely intersections, where zero estimates make a return appearance.
'Several features of this book are original. First of all: the topic ... Next, thanks to the unique style of the author, this book offers a pleasant reading; a number of nice jokes enable the reader to have a good time while learning high level serious mathematic ... This book includes a large number of statements, proofs, ideas, problem which will be of great value for the specialists; but it should interest also any mathematician, including students, who wish to expand their knowledge and see a superb example of a topic having an surprising number of different applications in several directions.' Bulletin of the European Mathematical Society 'Several features of this book are original. First of all: the topic ... Next, thanks to the unique style of the author, this book offers a pleasant reading; a number of nice jokes enable the reader to have a good time while learning high level serious mathematic ... This book includes a large number of statements, proofs, ideas, problem which will be of great value for the specialists; but it should interest also any mathematician, including students, who wish to expand their knowledge and see a superb example of a topic having an surprising number of different applications in several directions.' Bulletin of the European Mathematical Society