In the past few years there has been a fruitful exchange of expertise on the subject of partial differential equations (PDEs) between mathematicians from the People's Republic of China and the rest of the world. The goal of this collection of papers is to summarize and introduce the historical progress of the development of PDEs in China from the 1950s to the 1980s. The results presented here were mainly published before the 1980s, but, having been printed in the Chinese language, have not reached a wider audience. Topics covered include, among others, nonlinear hyperbolic equations, nonlinear elliptic equations, nonlinear parabolic equations, mixed equations, free boundary problems, minimal surfaces in Riemannian manifolds, microlocal analysis and solitons. The text is suitable for mathematicians and physicists interested in the historical development of PDEs in the People's Republic of China.

GU Chaohao The soliton theory is an important branch of nonlinear science. On one hand, it describes various kinds of stable motions appearing in - ture, such as solitary water wave, solitary signals in optical ?bre etc., and has many applications in science and technology (like optical signal communication). On the other hand, it gives many e?ective methods ofgetting explicit solutions of nonlinear partial di?erential equations. Therefore, it has attracted much attention from physicists as well as mathematicians. Nonlinearpartialdi?erentialequationsappearinmanyscienti?cpr- lems. Getting explicit solutions is usually a di?cult task. Only in c- tain special cases can the solutions be written down explicitly. However, for many soliton equations, people have found quite a few methods to get explicit solutions. The most famous ones are the inverse scattering method, B] acklund transformation etc.. The inverse scattering method is based on the spectral theory of ordinary di?erential equations. The Cauchyproblemofmanysolitonequationscanbetransformedtosolving a system of linear integral equations. Explicit solutions can be derived when the kernel of the integral equation is degenerate. The B] ac ] klund transformation gives a new solution from a known solution by solving a system of completely integrable partial di?erential equations. Some complicated "nonlinear superposition formula" arise to substitute the superposition principlein linear science."

Soliton theory is an important branch of applied mathematics and mathematical physics. An active and productive field of research, it has important applications in fluid mechanics, nonlinear optics, classical and quantum fields theories etc. This book presents a broad view of soliton theory. It gives an expository survey of the most basic ideas and methods, such as physical background, inverse scattering, Backl nd transformations, finite-dimensional completely integrable systems, symmetry, Kac-moody algebra, solitons and differential geometry, numerical analysis for nonlinear waves, and gravitational solitons. Besides the essential points of the theory, several applications are sketched and some recent developments, partly by the authors and their collaborators, are presented.

In the past few years there has been a fruitful exchange of expertise on the subject of partial differential equations (PDEs) between mathematicians from the People's Republic of China and the rest of the world. The goal of this collection of papers is to summarize and introduce the historical progress of the development of PDEs in China from the 1950s to the 1980s. The results presented here were mainly published before the 1980s, but, having been printed in the Chinese language, have not reached the wider audience they deserve. Topics covered include, among others, nonlinear hyperbolic equations, nonlinear elliptic equations, nonlinear parabolic equations, mixed equations, free boundary problems, minimal surfaces in Riemannian manifolds, microlocal analysis and solitons. For mathematicians and physicists interested in the historical development of PDEs in the People's Republic of China.

Soliton theory is an important branch of applied mathematics and mathematical physics. An active and productive field of research, it has important applications in fluid mechanics, nonlinear optics, classical and quantum fields theories etc. This book presents a broad view of soliton theory. It gives an expository survey of the most basic ideas and methods, such as physical background, inverse scattering, Backl nd transformations, finite-dimensional completely integrable systems, symmetry, Kac-moody algebra, solitons and differential geometry, numerical analysis for nonlinear waves, and gravitational solitons. Besides the essential points of the theory, several applications are sketched and some recent developments, partly by the authors and their collaborators, are presented.

GU Chaohao The soliton theory is an important branch of nonlinear science. On one hand, it describes various kinds of stable motions appearing in - ture, such as solitary water wave, solitary signals in optical ?bre etc., and has many applications in science and technology (like optical signal communication). On the other hand, it gives many e?ective methods ofgetting explicit solutions of nonlinear partial di?erential equations. Therefore, it has attracted much attention from physicists as well as mathematicians. Nonlinearpartialdi?erentialequationsappearinmanyscienti?cpr- lems. Getting explicit solutions is usually a di?cult task. Only in c- tain special cases can the solutions be written down explicitly. However, for many soliton equations, people have found quite a few methods to get explicit solutions. The most famous ones are the inverse scattering method, B] acklund transformation etc.. The inverse scattering method is based on the spectral theory of ordinary di?erential equations. The Cauchyproblemofmanysolitonequationscanbetransformedtosolving a system of linear integral equations. Explicit solutions can be derived when the kernel of the integral equation is degenerate. The B] ac ] klund transformation gives a new solution from a known solution by solving a system of completely integrable partial di?erential equations. Some complicated "nonlinear superposition formula" arise to substitute the superposition principlein linear science."

These refereed proceedings present recent developments on specific mathematical and physical aspects of nonlinear dynamics. The new findings discussed in here will be equally useful to graduate students and researchers. The topics dealt with cover a wide range of phenomena: solitons, integrable systems, Hamiltonian structures, Backlund and Darboux transformation, symmetries, fi- nite-dimensional dynamical systems, quantum and statistical mechanics, knot theory and braid group, R-matrix method, Hirota and Painleve analysis, and applications to water waves, lattices, porous media, string theory and even cellular automata.

The DD6 Symposium was, like its predecessors DD1 to DD5 both a research symposium and a summer seminar and concentrated on differential geometry. This volume contains a selection of the invited papers and some additional contributions. They cover recent advances and principal trends in current research in differential geometry.