The classical theories of Linear Elasticity and Newtonian Fluids, though trium phantly elegant as mathematical structures, do not adequately describe the defor mation and flow of most real materials. Attempts to characterize the behaviour of real materials under the action of external forces gave rise to the science of Rheology. Early rheological studies isolated the phenomena now labelled as viscoelastic. Weber (1835, 1841), researching the behaviour of silk threats under load, noted an instantaneous extension, followed by a further extension over a long period of time. On removal of the load, the original length was eventually recovered. He also deduced that the phenomena of stress relaxation and damping of vibrations should occur. Later investigators showed that similar effects may be observed in other materials. The German school referred to these as "Elastische Nachwirkung" or "the elastic aftereffect" while the British school, including Lord Kelvin, spoke ofthe "viscosityofsolids". The universal adoption of the term "Viscoelasticity", intended to convey behaviour combining proper ties both of a viscous liquid and an elastic solid, is of recent origin, not being used for example by Love (1934), though Alfrey (1948) uses it in the context of polymers. The earliest attempts at mathematically modelling viscoelastic behaviour were those of Maxwell (1867) (actually in the context of his work on gases; he used this model for calculating the viscosity of a gas) and Meyer (1874).

During the week of August 31 - September 4, 1998, a conference in honour of Vladimir Maz'ya was held in Rostock as a satellite meeting of the World Congress of Mathematicians. It was sponsored by the German Research Founda tion (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) and the Ministry of Education and Cul tural Affairs of the land Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. During his forty year career Maz'ya contributed to so many areas of mathematical analysis that such a broad topic of the conference as "Functional Analysis, Partial Differential Equations and Applications" sounds quite nat~al. The conference was organized by the Depart ment of Mathematics of the University of Rostock and the Weierstrass Institute of Applied Analysis and Stochastics in Berlin on the occasion of his 60th birth day. For many years Maz'ya was connected with mathematicians from Berlin and Rostock through his work in potential theory, in differential and pseudodifferen tial equations and in approximation theory. In 1990 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Rostock. Shortly before the meeting, one of its organizers, an outstanding mathematician and Maz'ya's dear friend, Siegfried Pr6Bdorf died. This was a heavy loss for the and for the conference in particular. During the German mathematical community meeting the rector of the University of Rostock, Prof. Wildenhain, the director of the Weierstrass Institute, Prof. Sprekels, and Prof. Maz'ya remembered S. Pr6Bdorf very warmly. The conference was attended by 109 mathematicians from 21 countries, and the program included 24 invited lectures and 63 short communications.

This volume is devoted to the life and work of the applied mathematician Professor Erhard Meister (1930-2001). He was a member of the editorial boards of this book series Operator The ory: Advances and Applications as well as of the journal Integral Equations and Operator Theory, both published by Birkhauser (now part of Springer-Verlag). Moreover he played a decisive role in the foundation of these two series by helping to establish contacts between Birkhauser and the founder and present chief editor of this book series after his emigration from Moldavia in 1974. The volume is divided into two parts. Part A contains reminiscences about the life of E. Meister including a short biography and an exposition of his professional work. Part B displays the wide range of his scientific interests through eighteen original papers contributed by authors with close scientific and personal relations to E. Meister. We hope that a great part of the numerous features of his life and work can be re-discovered from this book.

Lists citations with abstracts for aerospace related reports obtained from world wide sources and announces documents that have recently been entered into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information Database.

The first volume of this series dealt with the Basic Principles of Boundary Elements, while the second concentrated on time dependent problems and Volume three on the Computational Aspects of the method. This volume studies the applications of the method to a wide variety of geomechanics problems, most of which are ideally suited for boundary elements demonstrating the potentiality of the technique. Chapter 1 deals with the application of BEM to three dimensional elastody namics soil-structure interaction problems. It presents detailed formulations for rigid, massless foundations of arbitrary shape both in the frequency and time domains. The foundations are assumed to be resting on a linearly elastic, homogeneous, isotropic half-space and be subjected to externally applied loads on obliquely incident body. The chapter reviews the major advances in soil foundation interaction presents a series of numerical results and stresses the practical application of BEM, pointing out the high accuracy and efficiency of the technique, even when using coarse mesh discretizations.

Describes general mathematical modeling of viscoelastic materials as systems with fading memory. Discusses the interrelation between topics such as existence, uniqueness, and stability of initial boundary value problems, variational and extremum principles, and wave propagation. Demonstrates the deep connection between the properties of the solution to initial boundary value problems and the requirements of the general physical principles. Discusses special techniques and new methods, including Fourier and Laplace transforms, extremum principles via weight functions, and singular surfaces and discontinuity waves.