Why does nature prefer some shapes and not others? The variety of sizes, shapes, and irregularities in nature is endless. Skillfully integrating striking full-color illustrations, the authors describe the efforts by scientists and mathematicians since the Renaissance to identify and describe the principles underlying the shape of natural forms. But can one set of laws account for both the symmetry and irregularity as well as the infinite variety of nature's designs? A complete answer to this question is likely never to be discovered. Yet, it is fascinating to see how the search for some...

The main topics reflect the fields of mathematics in which Professor O.A. Ladyzhenskaya obtained her most influential results.

One of the main topics considered in the volume is the Navier-Stokes equations. This subject is investigated in many different directions. In particular, the existence and uniqueness results are obtained for the Navier-Stokes equations in spaces of low regularity. A sufficient condition for the regularity of solutions to the evolution Navier-Stokes equations in the three-dimensional case is derived and the stabilization of a solution to the Navier-Stokes...

The new series, International Mathematical Series founded by Kluwer / Plenum Publishers and the Russian publisher, Tamara Rozhkovskaya is published simultaneously in English and in Russian and starts with two volumes dedicated to the famous Russian mathematician Professor Olga Aleksandrovna Ladyzhenskaya, on the occasion of her 80th birthday.

O.A. Ladyzhenskaya graduated from the Moscow State University. But throughout her career she has been closely connected with St. Petersburg where she works at the V.A. Steklov Mathematical Institute of...

This book is not a textbook, but rather a coherent collection of papers from the field of partial differential equations. Nevertheless we believe that it may very well serve as a good introduction into some topics of this classical field of analysis which, despite of its long history, is highly modem and well prospering. Richard Courant wrote in 1950: "It has always been a temptationfor mathematicians to present the crystallized product of their thought as a deductive general theory and to relegate the individual mathematical phenomenon into the role of an example. The reader who submits to...