Mario Martelli - Böcker

A timely, accessible introduction to the mathematics of chaos. The past three decades have seen dramatic developments in the theory of dynamical systems, particularly regarding the exploration of chaotic behavior. Complex patterns of even simple processes arising in biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, economics, and a host of other disciplines have been investigated, explained, and utilized. Introduction to Discrete Dynamical Systems and Chaos makes these exciting and important ideas accessible to students and scientists by assuming, as a background, only the standard undergraduate training in calculus and linear algebra. Chaos is introduced at the outset and is then incorporated as an integral part of the theory of discrete dynamical systems in one or more dimensions. Both phase space and parameter space analysis are developed with ample exercises, more than 100 figures, and important practical examples such as the dynamics of atmospheric changes and neural networks. An appendix provides readers with clear guidelines on how to use Mathematica to explore discrete dynamical systems numerically. Selected programs can also be downloaded from a Wiley ftp site (address in preface). Another appendix lists possible projects that can be assigned for classroom investigation. Based on the author's 1993 book, but boasting at least 60% new, revised, and updated material, the present Introduction to Discrete Dynamical Systems and Chaos is a unique and extremely useful resource for all scientists interested in this active and intensely studied field.

This volume contains the results of a conference which explored current directions of research in delay differential equations and related dynamical systems and celebrated the contributions of Kenneth Cooke to this field on the occasion of his 65th birthday. The research articles deal with qualitative properties of solutions of delay differential equations and with bifurcation problems for such equations and other dynamical systems.

The past forty years have been the stage for the maturation of mathematical biolo~ as a scientific field. The foundations laid by the pioneers of the field during the first half of this century have been combined with advances in ap­ plied mathematics and the computational sciences to create a vibrant area of scientific research with established research journals, professional societies, deep subspecialty areas, and graduate education programs. Mathematical biology is by its very nature cross-disciplinary, and research papers appear in mathemat­ ics, biology and other scientific journals, as well as in the specialty journals devoted to mathematical and theoretical biology. Multiple author papers are common, and so are collaborations between individuals who have academic bases in different traditional departments. Those who seek to keep abreast of current trends and problems need to interact with research workers from a much broader spectrum of fields than is common in the traditional mono-culture disciplines. Consequently, it is beneficial to have occasions which bring together significant numbers of workers in this field in a forum that encourages the exchange of ideas and which leads to a timely publication of the work that is presented. Such an occasion occurred during January 13 to 16, 1990 when almost two hun­ dred research workers participated in an international conference on Differential Equations and Applications to Biology and Population Dynamics which was held in Claremont.

This volume contains the texts of four courses given by the authors at a summer school that sought to present the growing field of topological methods in the theory of ordinary differential equations (in finite and infinite dimension), and to provide a forum for discussion of the wide variety of mathematical tools which are involved. The topics covered range from the extensions of the Lefschetz fixed point and the fixed point index on ANRs, to the theory of parity of one-parameter families of Fredholm operators, and from the theory of coincidence degree for mappings on Banach spaces to homotopy methods for continuation principles.