Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2016
Let f: V → C be a fibration from a smooth projective surface onto a smooth projective curve over an algebraically closed field k. In the case of characteristic zero, almost all fibres of f are nonsingular. In the case of positive characteristic, it is, however, known that there exist fibrations whose general fibres have singularities. Moreover, it seems that such fibrations often have pathological phenomena of algebraic geometry in positive characteristic (see M. Raynaud [7], W. Lang [4]).