On the occasion of the International Conference on Nonlinear Hyperbolic Problems held in St. Etienne, France, 1986 it was decided to start a two years cycle of conferences on this very rapidly expanding branch of mathematics and it.s applications in Continuum Mechanics and Aerodynamics. The second conference toolc place in Aachen, FRG, March 14-18, 1988. The number of more than 200 participants from more than 20 countries all over the world and about 100 invited and contributed papers, well balanced between theory, numerical analysis and applications, do not leave any doubt that it was the...