Proceedings of the Second European Symposium on Mathematics in Industry: ESMI II March 1–7, 1987 Oberwolfach (European Consortium for Mathematics in Industry, 3)

"Mathematics in Industry" - since the volume containing the proceedings of the 1985 Oberwolfach conference was published*), this subject has become more fashionable in Europe, America and also in the third world. The Europeans have come closer to each other: They formed a European Consortium for Mathematics in Industry, abbreviated ECMI. This ECMI supported mainly by mathematicians from Amsterdam, Bari, Eindhoven, Firenze, Kaiserslautem, Limerick, Linz, Paris, Oxford and Trondheim has become a legal entity with a rapidly growing number of members. It has organized a common, really European postgraduate programme, establishes contact between industry and universities and organizes other confer­ ences everywhere in the world. Industrial mathematics is a special method to get interesting problems; a special attitude of curiosity for technical or economical questions; a general rather broad knowledge in all branches of mathematics; but it always remains real mathematics. Our first proceedings contained many articles about "why and how to start". Now we are more selfconfident about our ideas: These proceedings include only exam­ ples of "how to do". It is a pleasure to see how many different kinds of good mathematics are applied to so many different problems from industry. Part of the selection criteria for this volume was that some of the applications of what is usually considered ivory tower mathematics be represented.