This book is a concept-oriented treatment of the structure theory of association schemes. The generalization of Sylow's group theoretic theorems to scheme theory arises as a consequence of arithmetical considerations about quotient schemes. The theory of Coxeter schemes (equivalent to the theory of buildings) emerges naturally and yields a purely algebraic proof of Tits' main theorem on buildings of spherical type.

Paul-Hermann Zieschang received a Doctor of Natural Sciences and the Habilitation in Mathematics from the Christian-Albrechts-Universit t zu Kiel. He is also Extraordinary Professor of the Christian-Albrechts-Universit t zu Kiel. Presently, he holds the position of an Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Brownsville. He held visiting positions at Kansas State University and at Kyushu University in Fukuoka.