The giant gravitons are brane configurations which have the same quantum numbers and energy as a massless particle in supergravity. We will discuss the appearance of such configurations in several geometries of type II supergravity and M-theory.

This is the first of a series of three lectures on the connection between matrix models and supersymmetric gauge theories recently proposed by Dijkgraaf and Vafa. I will review in this lecture many aspects of the low energy dynamics of $N=1$ and $N=2$ supersymmetric gauge theories (such as the calculus of the effective superpotential, the Seiberg-Witten solution, etc.) that will be important in the following lectures.

This is the second lecture on the connection between matrix models and supersymmetric gauge theories recently proposed by Dijkgraaf and Vafa.

This is the last lecture on the connection between matrix models and supersymmetric gauge theories recently proposed by Dijkgraaf and Vafa.