Vladimir G. Makhankov - Böcker

"Nonlinear Evolution Equations and Dynamical Systems" (NEEDS) provides a presentation of the state of the art. But for some exceptions, the contributions are intentionally brief to give only the gist of the methods, proofs, etc including references to the relevant literature. This gives an overview of current research activities. Hence, the book should be equally useful to the senior researcher as well as the colleague just entering the field. Topics treated include One- and multi-dimensional or integrable models, geometric and algebraic methods, quantum field theory, applications to nonlinear optics, condensed matter physics, oceanography, and many others. Further keywords include Hirota bilinearity, Hamiltonians, Toda lattice, multi-dimensional inverse scattering, bifurcations, dromions, polynomial solutions, Ermakov systems, computer algebra, symplectic operators, (quantum) superalgebras, groups and Ising models. This book of proceedings on nonlinear dynamics, theoretical physics, mathematical physics and applied mathematics is intended for researchers and students.

The December 1988 issue of the International Journal of Modern Physics A is dedicated to the memory of Tony Hilton Royle Skyrme. It contains an informative account of his life by Dalitz and Aitchison's reconstruction of a talk by Skyrme on the origin of the Skyrme model. From these pages, we learn that Tony Skyrme was born in England in December 1922. He grew up in that country during a period of increasing economic and political turbulence in Europe and elsewhere. In 1943, after Cambridge, he joined the British war effort in making the atomic bomb. He was associated with military projects throughout the war years and began his career as an academic theoretical physicist only in 1946. During 1946-61, he was associated with Cambridge, Birmingham and Harwell and was engaged in wide-ranging investigations in nuclear physics. It was this research which eventually culminated in his studies of nonlinear field theories and his remarkable proposals for the description of the nucleon as a chiral soliton. In his talk, Skyrme described the reasons behind his extraordinary sug­ gestions, which when first made must have seemed bizarre. According to him, ideas of this sort go back many decades and occur in the work of Sir William Thomson, who later became Lord Kelvin. Skyrme had heard of Kelvin in his youth.

NEEDs '92 was held in Dubna, Russia in July 1992. This set of proceedings compiles the lectures and short contributions on the soliton theory and its applications presented during the conference. The topics covered included the most recent results on relevant problems of nonlinear evolution systems such as: Multidimensional Integrable Systems, Geometric and Algebraic Methods, Painleve Property, Lie-Backlund Symmetries, Spectral Methods, Solitons and Coherent Structures, Computational Methods, Quantum Field and String Theories, Nonlinear Optics and Hydrodynamics, Condensed Matter etc. The extent of coverage for these important topics makes this book useful, informative and insighful for the mathematics and theoretical physics community, both the senior researches and those just entering the field.