VLADIMIR I. ARNOLD—Collected Works

This volume 6 of the Collected Works comprises 27 papers by V.I.Arnold, one of the most outstanding mathematicians of all times, written in 1991 to 1995. During this period Arnold's interests covered Vassiliev’s theory of invariants and knots, invariants and bifurcations of plane curves, combinatorics of Bernoulli, Euler and Springer numbers, geometry of wave fronts, the Berry phase and quantum Hall effect.

The articles include a list of problems in dynamical systems, a discussion of the problem of (in)solvability of equations, papers on symplectic geometry of caustics and contact geometry of wave fronts, comments on problems of A.D.Sakharov, as well as a rather unusual paper on projective topology. The interested reader will certainly enjoy Arnold’s 1994 paper on mathematical problems in physics with the opening by-now famous phrase “Mathematics is the name for those domains of theoretical physics that are temporarily unfashionable.”

The book will be of interest to the wide audience from college students to professionals in mathematics or physics and in the history of science. The volume also includes translations of two interviews given by Arnold to the French and Spanish media. One can see how worried he was about the fate of Russian and world mathematics and science in general.