The Theory of Dynamical Systems was first introduced by the great mathematician Henri Poincaré as a qualitative study of differential equations. For more than forty years, Jacob Palis has made outstanding contributions to this area of mathematics. In the 1970s, following in the wake of Stephen Smale, he became one of the major figures in developing the Theory of Hyperbolic Dynamics and Structural Stability. This volume presents a selection of Jacob Palis’ mathematical contributions, starting with his PhD thesis and ending with papers on what is widely known as the Palis Conjecture. Most of the papers included in the present volume are inspired by the earlier work of Poincaré and, more recently, by Steve Smale among others. They aim at providing a description of the general structure of dynamical systems. Jacob Palis, whose work has been distinguished with numerous international prizes, is broadly recognized as the father of the Latin American School of Mathematics in Dynamical Systems and one of the most important scientific personalities on the continent. In 2010 he was awarded the Balzan Prize for his fundamental contributions in the Mathematical Theory of Dynamical Systems, which has been the basis for many applications in various scientific disciplines.

This is a self-contained introduction to the classical theory of homoclinic bifurcation theory, as well as its generalizations and more recent extensions to higher dimensions. It is also intended to stimulate new developments, relating the theory of fractal dimensions to bifurcations, and concerning homoclinic bifurcations as generators of chaotic dynamics. To this end the authors finish the book with an account of recent research and point out future prospects. The book begins with a review chapter giving background material on hyperbolic dynamical systems. The next three chapters give a detailed treatment of a number of examples, Smale's description of the dynamical consequences of transverse homoclinic orbits and a discussion of the subordinate bifurcations that accompany homoclinic bifurcations, including Henon-like families. The core of the work is the investigation of the interplay between homoclinic tangencies and non-trivial basic sets. The fractal dimensions of these basic sets turn out to play an important role in determining which class of dynamics is prevalent near a bifurcation. The authors provide a new, more geometric proof of Newhouse's theorem on the coexistence of infinitely many periodic attractors, one of the deepest theorems in chaotic dynamics. Based on graduate courses, this unique book will be an essential purchase for students and research workers in dynamical systems, and also for scientists and engineers applying ideas from chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics.

III. Latin American School of Mathematics