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This IMA Volume in Mathematics and its Applications MULTIDIMENSIONAL HYPERBOLIC PROBLEMS AND COMPUTATIONS is based on the proceedings of a workshop which was an integral part ofthe 1988-89 IMA program on NONLINEAR WAVES. We are grateful to the Scientific Commit­ tee: James Glimm, Daniel Joseph, Barbara Keyfitz, Andrew Majda, Alan Newell, Peter Olver, David Sattinger and David Schaeffer for planning and implementing an exciting and stimulating year-long program. We especially thank the Work­ shop Organizers, Andrew Majda and James Glimm, for bringing together many of the major figures in a variety of research fields connected with multidimensional hyperbolic problems. A vner Friedman Willard Miller PREFACE A primary goal of the IMA workshop on Multidimensional Hyperbolic Problems and Computations from April 3-14, 1989 was to emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of contemporary research in this field involving the combination of ideas from the theory of nonlinear partial differential equations, asymptotic methods, numerical computation, and experiments. The twenty-six papers in this volume span a wide cross-section of this research including some papers on the kinetic theory of gases and vortex sheets for incompressible flow in addition to many papers on systems of hyperbolic conservation laws. This volume includes several papers on asymptotic methods such as nonlinear geometric optics, a number of articles applying numerical algorithms such as higher order Godunov methods and front­ tracking to physical problems along with comparison to experimental data, and also several interesting papers on the rigorous mathematical theory of shock waves.