This volume presents a carefully written introduction to nonlinear waves in the natural sciences and engineering. It contains many classical results as well as more recent results, dealing with topics such as the forced Korteweg--de Vries equation and material relating to X-ray crystallography. The volume contains nine chapters. Chapter 1 concerns asymptotics and nonlinear ordinary differential equations. Conservation laws are discussed in Chapter 2, and Chapter 3 considers water waves. The scattering and inverse scattering method is described in Chapter 4, which also contains a full...

The main idea of the present study is to demonstrate that the qualitative theory of diffe- rential equations, when applied to problems in fluid-and gasdynamics, will contribute to the understanding of qualitative aspects of fluid flows, in particular those concerned with geometrical properties of flow fields such as shape and stability of its streamline patterns. It is obvious that insight into the qualitative structure of flow fields is of great importance and appears as an ultimate aim of flow research. Qualitative insight fashions our know- ledge and serves as a good guide for further...

This is the first volume of a series of books that will describe current advances and past accompli shments of mathemat i ca 1 aspects of nonlinear sCience taken in the broadest contexts. This subject has been studied for hundreds of years, yet it is the topic in whi ch a number of outstandi ng di scoveri es have been made in the past two decades. Clearly, this trend will continue. In fact, we believe some of the great scientific problems in this area will be clarified and perhaps resolved. One of the reasons for this development is the emerging new mathematical ideas of nonlinear science. It...