Mikhail I. Rabinovich – författare

Since 1972 the Schools on Nonlinear Physics in Gorky have been a meeting place for Soviet scientists working in this field. Instead of producing for the first time English proceedings it has been decided to present a good cross section of nonlinear physics in the USSR. Thus the participants at the last School were invited to provide English reviews and research papers for these two volumes (which in the years to come will be followed by the proceedings of forthcoming schools). The first volume starts with a historical overview of nonlinear dynamics from Poincaré to the present day and touches topics like attractors, nonlinear oscillators and waves, turbulence, pattern formation, and dynamics of structures in nonequilibrium dissipative media. It then deals with structures, bistabilities, instabilities, chaos, dynamics of defects in 1d systems, self-organizations, solitons, spatio-temporal structures and wave collapse in optical systems, lasers, plasmas, reaction-diffusion systems and solids.

Since 1972 the Schools on Nonlinear Physics in Gorky have been a meeting place for Soviet scientists working in this field. Instead of producing for the first time English proceedings it has been decided to present a good cross section of nonlinear physics in the USSR. Thus the participants at the last School were invited to provide English reviews and research papers for these two volumes (which in the years to come will be followed by the proceedings of forthcoming schools). The second volume deals with dynamical chaos in classical and quantum systems, with evolution in chemical systems and self-organisation in biology, and with applications of nonlinear dynamics to condensed matter, sea waves, and astrophysics.

Since 1972 the Schools on Nonlinear Physics in Gorky have been a meeting place for Soviet Scientists working in this field. Since 1989 the proceedings appear in English. They present a good cross section of nonlinear physics in the USSR. This third volume emerged from material presented at the 1989 School. It contains sections dealing with nonlinear problems in physics and astrophysics, quantum and solid state physics, dynamical chaos and self-organization.

Since 1972 the Schools on Nonlinear Physics in Gorky have been a meeting place for Soviet scientists working in this field. Instead of producing for the first time English proceedings it has been decided to present a good cross section of nonlinear physics in the USSR. Thus the participants at the last School were invited to provide English reviews and research papers for these two volumes (which in the years to come will be followed by the proceedings of forthcoming schools). The first volume starts with a historical overview of nonlinear dynamics from Poincaré to the present day and touches topics like attractors, nonlinear oscillators and waves, turbulence, pattern formation, and dynamics of structures in nonequilibrium dissipative media. It then deals with structures, bistabilities, instabilities, chaos, dynamics of defects in 1d systems, self-organizations, solitons, spatio-temporal structures and wave collapse in optical systems, lasers, plasmas, reaction-diffusion systems and solids.

Since 1972 the Schools on Nonlinear Physics in Gorky have been a meeting place for Soviet scientists working in this field. Instead of producing for the first time English proceedings it has been decided to present a good cross section of nonlinear physics in the USSR. Thus the participants at the last School were invited to provide English reviews and research papers for these two volumes (which in the years to come will be followed by the proceedings of forthcoming schools). The second volume deals with dynamical chaos in classical and quantum systems, with evolution in chemical systems and self-organisation in biology, and with applications of nonlinear dynamics to condensed matter, sea waves, and astrophysics.

In the dynamics of mankind one can trace out a path of contemplation about the "world", leading from early speculations to today's natural sciences. The endeavour to understand how nature works has led to the construction, still in progress, of an abstract building of great com­ plexity. To the uninitiated it may look more like a scurrilous sculpture resting on many legs, among them such peculiar ones as probability, relativity, quantum mechanics .... At times problems with the stabil­ ity of the building or sculpture arise: known facts that won't fit and can no longer be ignored start to undermine the foundations. Then new footings are thought of, constructed and finally cast. In fact, the undermining and casting is often done in one step. This process has already been repeated many times and will un­ doubtedly repeat itself again and again. At present, one recognizable footing under construction goes by the name of "chaos theory". Physi­ cists seem to like the word chaos. When they came to recognize that the air is not just empty space but an obviously indescribable dance of myriads of molecules they called that "chaos". What else would fit? In the course of time the name was simplified to "gas". Thus the word chaos became free to serve for the next upsetting experience. That arose in the context of nonlinear dynamical systems, where peculiar motions were detected, ones seemingly beyond human comprehension.