The Mathematics of Surfaces IX

Book excerpt: These proceedings collect the papers accepted for presentation at the bien nial IMA Conference on the Mathematics of Surfaces, held in the University of Cambridge, 4-7 September 2000. While there are many international con ferences in this fruitful borderland of mathematics, computer graphics and engineering, this is the oldest, the most frequent and the only one to concen trate on surfaces. Contributors to this volume come from twelve different countries in Eu rope, North America and Asia. Their contributions reflect the wide diversity of present-day applications which include modelling parts of the human body for medical purposes as well as the production of cars, aircraft and engineer ing components. Some applications involve design or construction of surfaces by interpolating or approximating data given at points or on curves. Others consider the problem of 'reverse engineering'-giving a mathematical descrip tion of an already constructed object. We are particularly grateful to Pamela Bye (at the Institue of Mathemat ics and its Applications) for help in making arrangements; Stephanie Harding and Karen Barker (at Springer Verlag, London) for publishing this volume and to Kwan-Yee Kenneth Wong (Cambridge) for his heroic help with com piling the proceedings and for dealing with numerous technicalities arising from large and numerous computer files. Following this Preface is a listing of the programme committee who with the help of their colleagues did much work in refereeing the papers for these proceedings.