LAWRENCEVILLE, NJ -- Dr. Ciprian Borcea of Lawrenceville, professor of mathematics at Rider University, is on paid research leave this fall to write a book entitled Lectures on Geometry: Elliptic, Parabolic, Hyperbolic.

He is writing in his book in Barcelona, Spain, and while there he will also give a lecture at the Universitat Politechnica de Catalunya.

He noted that people know non-Euclidean geometries exist, but it is not very common that college students or high school teachers really know what these geometries are. Undergraduate textbooks seldom attempt to present the remarkable unity which connects spherical, Euclidean and non-Euclidean spaces (that is, elliptic, parabolic, and hyperbolic geometries).

"The textbook I want to complete," he said, "would be accessible to students in command of their linear algebra and calculus, will present within reasonable confines a rigorous picture of the three possible geometries of constant curvature, the link they have through projective geometry, and will progress from this basis towards higher concepts and ideas which connect with inquiries of modern research."

Dr. Borcea joined the Rider mathematics faculty in 1990 after having been associated with the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Before that he was a mathematician with the National Institute for Scientific and Technical Creation for nine years.

He earned a Ph.D. degree from the University of Bucharest in Romania.