100 years after the first observation of ripening by Ostwald and 40 years after the first publication of a theory describing this process, this monograph presents, in a self-consistent and comprehensive manner, all the bits and pieces of coarsening theories so that the main issues and the underlying mathematics of self-similar coarsening of dispersed systems can be understood. It contains all of the background material necessary to understand growth and coarsening of spherical particles or droplets in a liquid or solid matrix. Some basic knowledge of heat and mass transfer, thermodynamics and...