Vallombrosa Center was host during the week September 7-12, 1985 to about 40 mathematicians, physical scientists, and engineers, who share a common interest in free surface phenomena. This volume includes a selection of contributions by participants and also a few papers by interested scientists who were unable to attend in person. Although a proceedings volume cannot recapture entirely the stimulus of personal interaction that ultimately is the best justification for such a gathering, we do offer what we hope is a representative sampling of the contributions, indicating something of the...

Capillarity phenomena are all about us; anyone who has seen a drop of dew on a plant leaf or the spray from a waterfall has observed them. Apart from their frequently remarked poetic qualities, phenomena of this sort are so familiar as to escape special notice. In this sense the rise of liquid in a narrow tube is a more dramatic event that demands and at first defied explanation; recorded observations of this and similar occur rences can be traced back to times of antiquity, and for lack of expla nation came to be described by words deriving from the Latin word "capillus," meaning hair. It...

This volume derives from a workshop on differential geometry, calculus of vari ations, and computer graphics at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, May 23-25, 1988. The meeting was structured around principal lectures given by F. Almgren, M. Callahan, J. Ericksen, G. Francis, R. Gulliver, P. Hanra han, J. Kajiya, K. Polthier, J. Sethian, I. Sterling, E. L. Thomas, and T. Vogel. The divergent backgrounds of these and the many other participants, as reflected in their lectures at the meeting and in their papers presented here, testify to the unifying element of the...