The authors are long-time fans of MSRI programs and monographs, and are thrilled to be able to contribute to this series. Our relationship with MSRI started when Paul Gross was an MSRI/Hewlett-Packard postdoctoral fellow and had the good fortune of being encouraged by Silvio Levy to coauthor a monograph. Silvio was there when we needed him, and it is in no way an understatement to say that the project would never have been completed without his support.

The material of this monograph is easily traced back to our Ph.D. theses, papers we wrote, and courses taught at Boston University over the years. Our apologies to anyone who feels slighted by a minimally updated bibliography. Reflecting on how the material of this monograph evolved, we would like to thank colleagues who have played a supporting role over the decades. Among them are Alain Bossavit, Peter Caines, Roscoe Giles, Robert Hermann, Lauri Kettunen, Isaak Mayergoyz, Peter Silvester, and Gilbert Strang. The authors are also indebted to numerous people who read through all or part of the manuscript, produced numerous comments, and provided all sorts of support. In particular, Andre Nicolet, Jonathan Polimeni, and Saku Suuriniemi made an unusually thorough effort to review the draft.

Paul Gross would like to acknowledge Nick Tufillaro at Hewlett-Packard and Agilent Technologies for mentoring him throughout his post-doc at MSRI. Tim Dere graciously provided his time and expertise for illustrations.