A. Cuyt - Böcker

This text contains the proceedings of the international conference on Nonlinear Numerical Methods and Rational Approximation II, which Dr. Cuyt organized at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, 5-11 September 1992. The conference focused on the use of rational functions in different fields of numerical analysis. The invited speakers discussed five main topics, which are represented by the five sections of this book: orthogonal polynomials, rational interpolation, rational approximation, Pade approximation and continued fractions. Multivariate and multidimensional problems, application and implementations of each main topic are also considered. The text is aimed at specialists in the field of nonlinear numerical methods and rational approximation.

Approach your problems from the right end It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is and begin with the answers. Then one day, that they can't see the problem. perhaps you will find the final question. G. K. Chesterton. The Scandal of Father 'The Hermit Clad in Crane Feathers' in R. Brown 'The point of a Pin'. van Gu!ik's The Chinese Maze Murders. Growing specialization and diversification have brought a host of monographs and textbooks on increasingly specialized topics. However, the "tree" of knowledge of mathematics and related fields does not grow only by putting forth new branches. It also happens, quite often in fact, that branches which were thought to be completely disparate are suddenly seen to be related. Further, the kind and level of sophistication of mathematics applied in various sciences has changed drastically in recent years: measure theory is used (non-trivially) in regional and theoretical economics; algebraic geometry interacts with physics; the Minkowsky lemma, coding theory and the structure of water meet one another in packing and covering theory; quantum fields, crystal defects and mathematical programming profit from homotopy theory; Lie algebras are relevant to filtering; use Stein spaces. And in addition to this there are and prediction and electrical engineering can such new emerging subdisciplines as "experimental mathematics", "CFD", "completely integrable systems", "chaos, synergetics and large-scale order", which are almost impossible to fit into the existing classification schemes. They draw upon widely different sections of mathematics.

These are the proceedings of the international conference on "Nonlinear numerical methods and Rational approximation II" organised by Annie Cuyt at the University of Antwerp (Belgium), 05-11 September 1993. It was held for the third time in Antwerp at the conference center of UIA, after successful meetings in 1979 and 1987 and an almost yearly tradition since the early 70's. The following figures illustrate the growing number of participants and their geographical dissemination. In 1993 the Belgian scientific committee consisted of A. Bultheel (Leuven), A. Cuyt (Antwerp), J. Meinguet (Louvain-Ia-Neuve) and J.-P. Thiran (Namur). The conference focused on the use of rational functions in different fields of Numer­ ical Analysis. The invited speakers discussed "Orthogonal polynomials" (D. S. Lu­ binsky), "Rational interpolation" (M. Gutknecht), "Rational approximation" (E. B. Saff) , "Pade approximation" (A. Gonchar) and "Continued fractions" (W. B. Jones). In contributed talks multivariate and multidimensional problems, applications and implementations of each main topic were considered. To each of the five main topics a separate conference day was devoted and a separate proceedings chapter compiled accordingly. In this way the proceedings reflect the organisation of the talks at the conference. Nonlinear numerical methods and rational approximation may be a nar­ row field for the outside world, but it provides a vast playground for the chosen ones. It can fascinate specialists from Moscow to South-Africa, from Boulder in Colorado and from sunny Florida to Zurich in Switzerland.