J.L. Lions – författare

The applications of the theory of Optimal Control of distributed parameters is an extremely wide field and, although a large number of questions remain open, the whole subject continues to expand very rapidly. The author does not attempt to cover the field but does discuss a number of the more interesting areas of application.

Pierre Grisvard, one of the most distinguished French mathematicians, died on April 22, 1994. A Conference was held in November 1994 out of which grew the invited articles contained in this volume. All of the papers are related to functional analysis applied to partial differential equations, which was Grisvard's specialty. Indeed his knowledge of this area was extremely broad. He began his career as one of the very first students of Jacques Louis Lions, and in 1965, he presented his "State Thesis" on interpolation spaces, using in particular, spectral theory for linear operators in Banach spaces. After 1970, he became a specialist in the study of optimal regularity for par­ tial differential equations with boundary conditions. He studied singulari­ ties coming from coefficients, boundary conditions, and mainly non-smooth domains, and left a legacy of precise results which have been published in journals and books. Pierre Grisvard spent most of his career as a full professor at the University of Nice, where he started in 1967. For shorter or longer periods, he visited several foreign countries, and collaborated with some of the most famous mathematicians in his field. He was also an excellent organizer and directed a large number of Ph.D. students. Finally, this volume contains a bibliography of Grisvard's works as well as one paper which he wrote and which has not been published before.

IRIA LABORIA, Institut de Recherche d'Informatique et d'Automatique

From the foreword: "This volume contains most of the 113 papers presented during the Eighth International Conference on Analysis and Optimization of Systems organized by the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique. Papers were presented by speakers coming from 21 different countries. These papers deal with both theoretical and practical aspects of Analysis and Optimization of Systems. Most of the topics of System Theory have been covered and five invited speakers of international reputation have presented the new trends of the field."