We discuss the history of the monodromy theorem, starting from Weierstrass, and the concept of monodromy group. From this viewpoint we compare then the Weierstrass , the Legendre and other normal forms for elliptic curves, explaining their geometric
meaning and distinguishing them by their stabilizer in P SL(2,Z) and their monodromy. Then we focus on the birth of the concept of the Jacobian variety, and the geometrization of the theory of Abelian functions and integrals. We end illustrating the methods of complex analysis in the simplest issue, the difference equation $f(z) = g(z+1) - g(z)$ on $mathbb C$.
We prove the unirationality of the Ueno-type manifold $X_{4,6}$. $X_{4,6}$ is the minimal resolution of the quotient of the Cartesian product $E(6)^4$, where $E(6)$ is the equianharmonic elliptic curve, by the diagonal action of a cyclic group of ord
er 6 (having a fixed point on each copy of $E(6)$). We collect also other results, and discuss several related open questions.
We prove some basic theorems concerning lemniscate configurations in an Euclidean space of dimension $ n geq 3$. Lemniscates are defined as follows. Given m points $w_j $ in $mathbb R^n$, consider the function $F(x)$ which is the product of the dista
nces $ |x-w_j|$: the singular level sets of the function $F$ are called lemniscates. We show via complex analysis that the critical points of $F$ have Hessian of positivity at least $(n-1)$. This implies that, if $F$ is a Morse function, then $F$ has only local minima and saddle points with negativity 1. The critical points lie in the convex span of the points $|w_j| $ (these are absolute minima): but we made also the discovery that $F$ can also have other local minima, and indeed arbitrarily many. We discuss several explicit examples. We finally prove in the appendix that all critical points are isolated.
One of the main themes of this long article is the study of projective varieties which are K(H,1)s, i.e. classifying spaces BH for some discrete group H. After recalling the basic properties of such classifying spaces, an important class of such vari
eties is introduced, the one of Bagnera-de Franchis varieties, the quotients of an Abelian variety by the free action of a cyclic group. Moduli spaces of Abelian varieties and of algebraic curves enter into the picture as examples of rational K(H,1)s, through Teichmueller theory. The main thrust of the paper is to show how in the case of K(H,1)s the study of moduli spaces and deformation classes can be achieved through by now classical results concerning regularity of classifying maps. The Inoue type varieties of Bauer and Catanese are introduced and studied as a key example, and new results are shown. Motivated from this study, the moduli spaces of algebraic varieties, and especially of algebraic curves with a group of automorphisms of a given topological type are studied in detail, following new results by the author, Michael Loenne and Fabio Perroni. Finally, the action of the absolute Galois group on the moduli spaces of such K(H,1) varieties is studied. In the case of surfaces isogenous to a product, it is shown how this yields a faifhtul action on the set of connected components of the moduli space: for each Galois automorphisms of order different from 2 there is a surface S such that the Galois conjugate surface of S has fundamental group not isomorphic to the one of S.
