A simple constructive proof of Canonical Resolution of Singularities

In these notes, we describe some of the main features of an explicit proof of canonical desingularization (of algebraic varieties or analytic spaces X) in characteristic zero. Full details will appear in [7]. The proof is a variation on our proof of local desingularization (“uniformization”) [4], [5], and justifies the philosophy that “a sufficiently good local choice [of centre of blowing-up] should globalize automatically” [5, p. 901]. The final version is surprisingly elementary; these notes, for example, include an essentially self-contained presentation of the hypersurface case. The general case involves a “reduction to the hypersurface case” result from [5].