This book provides a comprehensive treatment of the development and present state of the theory of sensitivity of dynamic systems. It is intended as a textbook and reference for researchers and scientists in electrical engineering, control and information theory as well as for mathematicians. The extensive and structured bibliography provides an overview of the literature in the field and points out directions for further research.

It is with great pleasure that I offer my reflections on Professor Anthony N. Michel's retirement from the University of Notre Dame. I have known Tony since 1984 when he joined the University of Notre Dame's faculty as Chair of the Depart ment of Electrical Engineering. Tony has had a long and outstanding career. As a researcher, he has made im portant contributions in several areas of systems theory and control theory, espe cially stability analysis of large-scale dynamical systems. The numerous awards he received from the professional societies, particularly the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), are a testament to his accomplishments in research. He received the IEEE Control Systems Society's Best Transactions Paper Award (1978), and the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society's Guillemin-Cauer Prize Paper Award (1984) and Myril B. Reed Outstanding Paper Award (1993), among others. In addition, he was a Fulbright Scholar (1992) and received the Alexander von Hum boldt Forschungspreis (Alexander von Humboldt Research Award for Senior U.S. Scientists) from the German government (1997). To date, he has written eight books and published over 150 archival journal papers. Tony is also an effective administrator who inspires high academic standards.

Sensitivity Methods in Control Theory is a collection of manuscripts presented as the Third International Symposium of Sensitivity Analysis, held at Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia on August 31-September 5, 1964, sponsored by The Theory Committee of International Federation of Automatic Control. Sensitivity theory or sensitivity analysis concerns the solution of problems associated with parameter variations within the general scope of control theory. This book is organized into five parts encompassing 30 chapters. Part I presents some basic approaches of sensitivity analysis, such the Lyapunov's theory of stability, invariant imbedding, nonlinear sampled data, and linear time-varying systems. This part also looks into the preliminary steps towards the development of game theory and some general applications of sensitivity analysis. Part II treats the problem of accuracy, reliability, self-adjustment, and optimization of sensitivity of automatic control systems, while Part III deals with the functional derivative technique of sensitivity analysis and its applications for designing self-adjusting control systems. Part IV describes the task of synthesizing control systems for linear plants with variable parameters satisfying specified performance criteria. Part V considers the association between sensitivity and optimality in various control systems. This book will prove useful to design and other specialized fields in engineering.