The proceedings discuss the theoretical methods used to describe a chemical system which is far from the equilibrium state, and this is illustrated by selected applications. Special attention is paid to very fast chemical reactions and systems in which external or internal noise is present. In particular, the following topics are covered:-the generalized Boltzmann/ Enskog equation for nonequilibrium systems,-stochastic methods for description of noise in chemical systems,-numerical simulations of systems far from equilibrium.

This volume contains invited lectures and selected participants' contributions. The conference was organized by the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Markedly apart from elementary particle physics, another current has been building up and cont i nuous ly growi ng within contemporary phys i cs for severa 1 decades, and even expanding into many other disciplines, especially chemistry, biology and, quite recently, economics. Several reasons account for this: presumably the most impor tant one lies in the fact that, whatever the specific problem, model or material concerned, the same basic mathematical features are always involved. In this way, a general phenomenology has emerged which, unlike thermodynamics, is no longer depen dent upon the details or specifics: what largely prevails is the nonlinear charac ter of the underlying dynamics. Perhaps we are witnessing the emergence of a "non linear physics"--In a way similar to the birth of "quantum physics" in the twen ties - a physics which deals with the general behaviour of systems, whatever they are or may be. Over the past fifteen years, chemical systems evolving sufficiently far from equilibrium have proved to be particularly well fitted to experimental research on nonlinear behaviour: oscillation, multistability, birhythmicity, chaotic evolution, spatial self-organization and hysteresis are displayed by chemical reactions whose number is growing each year. In this volume are collected the lectures, communica tions and posters (abstracts) presented at an international meeting entitled: "Non-Equilibrium Dynamics in Chemical Systems", held in Bordeaux (France), Septem ber 3 rd-lth, 1984.

Many novel cooperative phenomena found in a variety of systems studied by scientists can be treated using the uniting principles of synergetics. Examples are frustrated and random systems, polymers, spin glasses, neural networks, chemical and biological systems, and fluids. In this book attention is focused on two main problems. First, how local, topological constraints (frustrations) can cause macroscopic cooperative behavior: related ideas initially developed for spin glasses are shown to play key roles also for optimization and the modeling of neural networks. Second, the dynamical constraints that arise from the nonlinear dynamics of the systems: the discussion covers turbulence in fluids, pattern formation, and conventional 1/f noise. The volume will be of interest to anyone wishing to understand the current development of work on complex systems, which is presently one of the most challenging subjects in statistical and condensed matter physics.