the whole manuscript. Thanks go especially to Professor \Valter Gander of ETH, Zurich, who at the finishing stage and as an expert of 'JEXgenerously invested numerous hours to assist us in solving software as well as hardware problems; thanks go also to Martin Muller, Ingenieurschule Biel, who made the final layout of this book on the NeXT computer. Thanks are also due to Helmut Kopka of the Max Planck Institute, for solving software problems, and to Professor Burchard Kaup of the Uni­ versity of Fribourg, Switzerland for adding some useful software; also to Birkhauser Boston Inc. for the pleasant co-operation. Finally, let me be reminiscent of Professor E. Stiefel (deceased 1978) with whom I had many interesting discussions and true co-operation when writing the book in German.