Optimization Theory and Methods can be used as a textbook for an optimization course for graduates and senior undergraduates. It is the result of the author's teaching and research over the past decade. It describes optimization theory and several powerful methods. For most methods, the book discusses an idea's motivation, studies the derivation, establishes the global and local convergence, describes algorithmic steps, and discusses the numerical performance.

About 60 scientists and students attended the 96' International Conference on Nonlinear Programming, which was held September 2-5 at Institute of Compu tational Mathematics and Scientific/Engineering Computing (ICMSEC), Chi nese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. 25 participants were from outside China and 35 from China. The conference was to celebrate the 60's birthday of Professor M.J.D. Powell (Fellow of Royal Society, University of Cambridge) for his many contributions to nonlinear optimization. On behalf of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, vice president Professor Zhi hong Xu attended...

Optimization Theory and Methods can be used as a textbook for an optimization course for graduates and senior undergraduates. It is the result of the author's teaching and research over the past decade. It describes optimization theory and several powerful methods. For most methods, the book discusses an idea's motivation, studies the derivation, establishes the global and local convergence, describes algorithmic steps, and discusses the numerical performance.