A proof of A. Gabrielovs rank Theorem

This article contains a complete proof of Gabrielovs rank Theorem, a fundamental result in the study of analytic map germs. Inspired by the works of Gabrielov and Tougeron, we develop formal-geometric techniques which clarify the difficult parts of the original proof. These techniques are of independent interest, and we illustrate this by adding a new (very short) proof of the Abhyankar-Jung Theorem. We include, furthermore, new extensions of the rank Theorem (concerning the Zariski main Theorem and elimination theory) to commutative algebra.