This is a revised and expanded edition of Kac's original introduction to algebraic aspects of conformal field theory, which was published by the AMS in 1996. The volume serves as an introduction to algebraic aspects of conformal field theory, which in the past 15 years revealed a variety of unusual mathematical notions. Vertex algebra theory provides an effective tool to study them in a unified way.

In the book, a mathematician encounters new algebraic structures that originated from Einstein's special relativity postulate and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. A physicist will find familiar notions presented in a more rigorous and systematic way, possibly leading to a better understanding of foundations of quantum physics.