Machine generated contents note: ch. 1 The Beginning of the Theory -- 1.The Minimal Surface Equation and Minimal Submanifolds -- 2.Examples of Minimal Surfaces in R3 -- 3.Consequences of the First Variation Formula -- 4.The Gauss Map -- 5.The Theorem of Bernstein -- 6.The Weierstrass Representation -- 7.The Strong Maximum Principle -- 8.Second Variation Formula, Morse Index, and Stability -- 9.Multi-valued Graphs -- 10.Local Examples of Multi-valued Graphs -- Appendix: The Harnack Inequality -- Appendix: The Bochner formula -- ch. 2 Curvature Estimates and Consequences -- 1.Simons' Inequality -- 2.Small Energy Curvature Estimates for Minimal Surfaces -- 3.Curvature and Area -- 4.Lp Bounds of