Vladimir Babitsky was born before the Second World War and migrated West after Perestroika. The theory of vibro-impact systems that he developed helped create the world's safest jackhammer and other record-breaking machines. The author has lived through a series of fascinating epochs: experiencing life under totalitarianism, witnessing the Soviet Union's collapse, and then migrating to Europe as a specialist in his field. "On the Waves of a Pulsating World" is an animated and highly engaging story about the journey of an engineer; from childhood daydreams to creating new technologies, from East to West, and from concepts to realities. It is also the story of people who outshine authoritarianism.

The EUROMECH Colloquium "Dynamics of Vibro-Impact Systems" was held at th th Loughborough University on September 15 _18 , 1998. This was the flrst international meeting on this subject continuing the traditions of the series of Russian meetings held regularly since 1963. Mechanical systems with multiple impact interactions have wide applications in engineering as the most intensive sources of mechanical influence on materials, structures and processes. Vibro-impact systems are used widely in machine dynamics, vibration engineering, and structural mechanics. Analysis of vibro-impact systems involves the investigation of mathematical models with discontinuities and reveals their behaviour as strongly non-linear. Such systems exhibit complex resonances, synchronisation and pulling, bifurcations and chaos, exCitation of space coherent structures, shock waves, and solitons. The aim of the Colloquium was to facilitate the exchange of up-to-date information on the analysis and synthesis of vibro-impact systems as well as on the new developments in excitation, control and applications of vibro-impact processes.

Vladimir Babitsky was born before the Second World War and migrated West after Perestroika. The theory of vibro-impact systems that he developed helped create the world's safest jackhammer and other record-breaking machines. The author has lived through a series of fascinating epochs: experiencing life under totalitarianism, witnessing the Soviet Union's collapse, and then migrating to Europe as a specialist in his field. "On the Waves of a Pulsating World" is an animated and highly engaging story about the journey of an engineer; from childhood daydreams to creating new technologies, from East to West, and from concepts to realities. It is also the story of people who outshine authoritarianism.