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A renowned mathematician who considers himself both applied and theoretical in his approach, Peter Lax has spent most of his professional career at NYU, making significant contributions to both mathematics and computing. He has written several important published works and has received numerous honors including the National Medal of Science, the Lester R. Ford Award, the Chauvenet Prize, the Semmelweis Medal, the Wiener Prize, and the Wolf Prize. Several students he has mentored have become leaders in their fields.Two volumes span the years from 1952 up until 1999, and cover many varying topics, from functional analysis, partial differential equations, and numerical methods to conservation laws, integrable systems and scattering theory. After each paper, or collection of papers, is a commentary placing the paper in context and where relevant discussing more recent developments. Many of the papers in these volumes have become classics and should be read by any serious student of these topics. In terms of insight, depth, and breadth, Lax has few equals. The reader of this selecta will quickly appreciate his brilliance as well as his masterful touch. Having this collection of papers in one place allows one to follow the evolution of his ideas and mathematical interests and to appreciate how many of these papers initiated topics that developed lives of their own.

This IMA Volume in Mathematics and its Applications COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS AND REACTING GAS FLOWS is in part the proceedings of a workshop which was an integral part of the 1986-87 IMA program on SCIENTIFIC COMPUTATION. We are grateful to the Scientific Committee: Bjorn Engquist (Chairman), Roland Glowinski, Mitchell Luskin and Andrew Majda for planning and implementing an exciting and stimulating year-long program. We especially thank the Workshop Organizers, Bjorn Engquist, Mitchell Luskin and Andrew Majda, for organizing a workshop which brought together many of the leading researchers in the area of computational fluid dynamics. George R. Sell Hans Weinberger PREFACE Computational fluid dynamics has always been of central importance in scientific computing. It is also a field which clearly displays the essential theme of interaction between mathematics, physics, and computer science. Therefore, it was natural for the first workshop of the 1986- 87 program on scientific computing at the Institute for Mathematics and Its Applications to concentrate on computational fluid dynamics. In the workshop, more traditional fields were mixed with fields of emerging importance such as reacting gas flows and non-Newtonian flows. The workshop was marked by a high level of interaction and discussion among researchers representing varied "schools of thought" and countries.