As far as the number of new results and quoted papers is concerned the present book may be considered a monograph. However, it also has some features of a textbook. Firstly, it proceeds from concrete problems to abstract ones, and secondly, all considerations and procedures are presented in much detail when met for the first time (such very elementary expositions can be found especially at the beginning of Chapters III and V). Finally, the authors focus their attention on elementary problems which can be dealt with by relatively simple methods. The authors hope that all this will make it possible also for an applied or technical research worker with some mathematical training to read this book. Naturally, the reader is supposed to be familiar with some basic notions from mathematical analysis, functional analysis and theory of partial differential equations. Also, the arguments and procedures which are repeated in the book are presented more briefly when met again, the reader being expected to become gradually more thoroughly acquainted with them. The authors have tried to provide a complete bibliography of all relevant publications (their number reaches about 500) from the theory of time-periodic solutions to non-linear partial and abstract differential equations whose origin may be put in the early thirties of this century.
