These two volumes represent the culmination of the Special Year '84-'85 in Reacting Flows held at Cornell University. As the proceedings of the 1985 AMS/SIAM Summer Seminar in Applied Mathematics, the volumes focus on both mathematical and computational questions in combustion and chemical reactors. They are addressed to researchers and graduate students in the theory of reacting flows. Together they provide a sound basis and many incentives for future research, especially in computational aspects of reacting flows. Although the theory of reacting flows has developed rapidly, researchers in the two subareas of combustion and chemical reactors have not communicated. The main goal of this seminar was to synthesize the mathematical theory and bring it to the interface with large-scale computing. All of the papers have high research value, but the first five introductory lectures should be especially noted.
