Since 1972 the Schools on Nonlinear Physics in Gorky have been a meeting place for Soviet Scientists working in this field. Since 1989 the proceedings appear in English. They present a good cross section of nonlinear physics in the USSR. This "third volume" emerged from material presented at the 1989 School. It contains sections dealing with nonlinear problems in physics and astrophysics, quantum and solid state physics, dynamical chaos and self-organization.

Since 1972 the Schools on Nonlinear Physics in Gorky have been a meeting place for Soviet scientists working in this field. Instead of producing for the first time English proceedings it has been decided to present a good cross section of nonlinear physics in the USSR. Thus the participants at the last School were invited to provide English reviews and research papers for these two volumes (which in the years to come will be followed by the proceedings of forthcoming schools). "The second volume" deals with dynamical chaos in classical and quantum systems, with evolution in chemical systems and self-organisation in biology, and with applications of nonlinear dynamics to condensed matter, sea waves, and astrophysics.

Since 1972 the Schools on Nonlinear Physics in Gorky have been a meeting place for Soviet scientists working in this field. Instead of producing for the first time English proceedings it has been decided to present a good cross section of nonlinear physics in the USSR. Thus the participants at the last School were invited to provide English reviews and research papers for these two volumes (which in the years to come will be followed by the proceedings of forthcoming schools). "The first volume" starts with a historical overview of nonlinear dynamics from Poincare to the present day and touches topics like attractors, nonlinear oscillators and waves, turbulence, pattern formation, and dynamics of structures in nonequilibrium dissipative media. It then deals with structures, bistabilities, instabilities, chaos, dynamics of defects in 1d systems, self-organizations, solitons, spatio-temporal structures and wave collapse in optical systems, lasers, plasmas, reaction-diffusion systems and solids."

Spirals, vortices, crystalline lattices, and other attractive patterns are prevalent in Nature. How do such beautiful patterns appear from the initial chaos? What universal dynamical rules are responsible for their formation? What is the dynamical origin of spatial disorder in nonequilibrium media? Based on the many visual experiments in physics, hydrodynamics, chemistry, and biology, this invaluable book answers those and related intriguing questions. The mathematical models presented for the dynamical theory of pattern formation are nonlinear partial differential equations. The corresponding theory is not so accessible to a wide audience. Consequently, the authors have made every attempt to synthesize long and complex mathematical calculations to exhibit the underlying physics. The book will be useful for final year undergraduates, but is primarily aimed at graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and others interested in the puzzling phenomena of pattern formation.