  The concept of symmetries in physics is briefly reviewed. In the first part
of these lecture notes, some of the basic mathematical tools needed for the
understanding of symmetries in nature are presented, namely group theory, Lie
groups and Lie algebras, and Noether's theorem. In the second part, some
applications of symmetries in physics are discussed, ranging from isospin and
flavor symmetry to more recent developments involving the interacting boson
model and its extension to supersymmetries in nuclear physics.
