This book contains the proceedings of two international conferences: a satellite meeting of the IUPAP Statphys-19 Conference and the Seventh Nankai Workshop, held in Tianjin, China in August 1995. The central theme of the two conferences, which drew participants from 18 countries, was the Yang-Baxter equation and its development and applications. With topics ranging from quantum groups, vertex and spin models, to applications in condensed matter physics, this book reflects the current research interest of integrable systems in statistical mechanics.

This volume contains the proceedings of the conference on 'Exactly Soluble Models in Statistical Mechanics: Historical Perspectives and Current Status', held at Northeastern University in March 1996 — the first ever conference to deal exclusively with this topic. Besides invited presentations by leading researchers in the field, the conference held a session of contributed papers by participants from throughout the world. The proceedings, which include both the invited and the contributed papers, reflect the broad range of interest in exactly soluble models as well as the diverse fields in physics and mathematics that they connect. Apart from providing concise and timely reviews, the papers in this volume give a snapshot of the current state of affairs. The topics covered range from a historical survey of the field (by E H Lieb) to the latest formulation of a star-star transformation of spin models (by R J Baxter).

This unique volume provides a comprehensive overview of exactly solved models in statistical mechanics by looking at the scientific achievements of F Y Wu in this and related fields, which span four decades of his career. The book is organized into topics ranging from lattice models in condensed matter physics to graph theory in mathematics, and includes the author's pioneering contributions. Through insightful commentaries, the author presents an overview of each of the topics and an insider's look at how crucial developments emerged. With the inclusion of important pedagogical review articles by the author, Exactly Solved Models is an indispensable learning tool for graduate students, and an essential reference and source book for researchers in physics and mathematics as well as historians of science.