This volume reviews recent advances in the development and application of the recursion method in computational solid state physics and elsewhere. It comprises the invited papers which were presented at a two-day conference at Imperial College, London during September 1984. The recursion method is based on the Lanczos algorithm for the tridiago nalisation of matrices, but it is much more than a straightforward numerical technique. It is widely regarded as the most elegant framework for a variety of calculations into which one may incorporate physical insights and a num ber of technical...