This book contains several contributions on the most outstanding events in the development of twentieth century mathematics, representing a wide variety of specialities in which Russian and Soviet mathematicians played a considerable role. The articles are written in an informal style, from mathematical philosophy to the description of the development of ideas, personal memories and give a unique account of personal meetings with famous representatives of twentieth century mathematics who exerted great influence in its development.

This book will be of great interest to mathematicians, who will enjoy seeing their own specialities described with some historical perspective. Historians will read it with the same motive, and perhaps also to select topics for future investigation.

On April 29, 1814 Napoleon landed on the island of Elba, surrounded with a personal army of 1200 men. The allies, Russia, Prussia, England and Austria, hadforcedhimintoexileafteranumberofverycostlydefeats;hewasdeprived ofallhistitles, butcouldkeepthetitleof"EmperorofElba." Historytellsusthat each morning he took long walks in the sun, reviewed his army each midday anddiscussedworldmatterswithnewlyappointedadvisors, followingthesame pattern everyday, to the great surprise of Campbell, the British of?cer who was to keep an eye on him. All this made everyone believe he was settled there for good. Napoleononcesaid: Elbaisbeautiful, butabitsmall. Elbawasde?nitely a source of inspiration; indeed, the early morning, March 6, 1815, Metternich, the chancellor of Austria was woken up by one of his aides with the stunning news that Napoleon had left Elba with his 1200 men and was marching to Paris with little resistance; A few days later he took up his throne again in the Tuileries. In spite of his insatiable hunger for battles and expansion, he is remembered as an important statesman. He was a pioneer in setting up much of the legal, administrative and political machinery in large parts of continental Europe. We gathered here in a lovely and quaint ?shing port, Marciana Marina on theislandofElba, tocelebrateoneofthepioneersofintegrablesystems, Hirota Sensei, andthisattheoccasionofhisseventiethbirthday. Trainedasaphysicist in his home university Kyushu University, Professor Hirota earned his PhD in '61 at Northwestern University with Professor Siegert in the ?eld of "Quantum Statistical mechanics." He wrote a widely appreciated Doctoral dissertation on "FunctionalIntegralrepresentationofthegrandpartitionfunction."

The main characteristic of this classic exposition of the inverse scattering method and its applications to soliton theory is its consistent Hamiltonian approach to the theory. The nonlinear Schr dinger equation is considered as a main example, forming the first part of the book. The second part examines such fundamental models as the sine-Gordon equation and the Heisenberg equation, the classification of integrable models and methods for constructing their solutions.

On April 29, 1814 Napoleon landed on the island of Elba, surrounded with a personal army of 1200 men. The allies, Russia, Prussia, England and Austria, hadforcedhimintoexileafteranumberofverycostlydefeats;hewasdeprived ofallhistitles, butcouldkeepthetitleof"EmperorofElba." Historytellsusthat each morning he took long walks in the sun, reviewed his army each midday anddiscussedworldmatterswithnewlyappointedadvisors, followingthesame pattern everyday, to the great surprise of Campbell, the British of?cer who was to keep an eye on him. All this made everyone believe he was settled there for good. Napoleononcesaid: Elbaisbeautiful, butabitsmall. Elbawasde?nitely a source of inspiration; indeed, the early morning, March 6, 1815, Metternich, the chancellor of Austria was woken up by one of his aides with the stunning news that Napoleon had left Elba with his 1200 men and was marching to Paris with little resistance; A few days later he took up his throne again in the Tuileries. In spite of his insatiable hunger for battles and expansion, he is remembered as an important statesman. He was a pioneer in setting up much of the legal, administrative and political machinery in large parts of continental Europe. We gathered here in a lovely and quaint ?shing port, Marciana Marina on theislandofElba, tocelebrateoneofthepioneersofintegrablesystems, Hirota Sensei, andthisattheoccasionofhisseventiethbirthday. Trainedasaphysicist in his home university Kyushu University, Professor Hirota earned his PhD in '61 at Northwestern University with Professor Siegert in the ?eld of "Quantum Statistical mechanics." He wrote a widely appreciated Doctoral dissertation on "FunctionalIntegralrepresentationofthegrandpartitionfunction."