This book is concerned with nonlinear semigroups of contractions in Banach spaces and their application to the existence theory for differential equa tions associated with nonlinear dissipative operators. The study of nonlinear semi groups resulted from the examination of nonlinear parabolic equations and from various nonlinear boundary value problems. The first work done by Y. Komura stimulated much further work and interest in this subject. Thus a series of studies was begun and then continued by T. Kato, M. G. Crandall, A. Pazy, H. Brezis and others, who made important con tributions to the development of the theory. The theory as developed below is a generalisation of the Hille-Yosida theory for one-parameter semigroups of linear operators and is a collection of diversified results unified more or less loosely by their methods of approach. This theory is also closely related to the theory of nonlinear monotone operators. Of course not all aspects of this theory could be covered in our expo sition, and many important contributions to the subject have been excluded for the sake of brevity. We have attempted to present the basic results to the reader and to orient him toward some of the applications. This book is intended to be self-contained. The reader is assumed to have only a basic knowledge of functional analysis, function theory and partial differential equations. Some of the necessary prerequisites for the reading of this 'book are summarized, with or without proof, in Chapter I.
