Concise and accessible: proofs and other technical matters are kept to a minimum to help the non-specialist

Each chapter is self-contained to make the book easy-to-use

Mu-Fa Chen is Professor of Mathematics at Beijing Normal University, in the People's Republic of China, and Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 1999 he received a Prize for Progress on Sciences and Technology from the Ministry of Education and a National Prize on Natural Sciences from the Ministry of Science and Technology in the People's Republic of China.