Book review

This volume represents an impressive overview of the scientific activities of Milton Wing and his many successors in the fields of transport theory and integral equations. Milton Wing is perhaps best known in connection with invariant imbedding, a conception which has grown out of his collaboration with Richard Bellman in the late 1950s. The seminal method of invariant imbedding stems from viewing transport processes primarily as input-output relations at the boundaries of the system considered, as opposed to the classical approach by means of transport equations for internal processes.

The proceedings begin with a very detailed preface, an appreciation of the scientific work of M. Wing and a list of his numerous publications. Then there follow 26 papers of his coworkers, friends and pupils, partly review papers and partly original contributions of different length. The topics treated include general problems of transport theory, transport from the viewpoint of linear algebra, transport in gases, plasmas, binary statistical mixtures and other systems, Brownian motion, random walk, transport in biological systems, nonlinear diffusion, radiation transfer and invariant imbedding, among others. Further papers describe progress in the field of linear and nonlinear integral equations and integro-differential equations including the Boltzmann equation and some of its applications. A critical and humorous epilogue by M. Wing closes the texts. A detailed index is added.

The volume is produced from original typescripts. It gives a lot of interesting professional information on topics which for decades have been in the focus of scientific interest. Potential readers include applied mathematicians, theoretical physicists, and experts in physical chemistry and partly in theoretical biology.