In the last ten to fifteen years, there have been many important developments in the theory of integrable equations. This period is marked in particular by the strong impact of soliton theory in many diverse areas of mathematics and physics: for example, algebraic geometry (the solution of the Schottky problem), group theory (the discovery of quantum groups), topology (the connection of Jones polynomials with integrable models), and quantum gravity (the connection of the KdV with matrix models). This book presents a comprehensive overview of these developments.
