The versatile soliton. Transl. from the Russian (Q2655276)

The book presents the development of soliton theory, whose complete mathematical description is a rather refined branch of modern mathematics, as a fascinating story, full of historical collisions. The soliton, a stable solitary wave preserving its shape and strikingly similar to a particle, is a multifaceted phenomenon relevant to many scientific fields. The author explains the idea of the soliton within the context of its historical development, from first observations of it as a solitary wave in water to recent applications in elementary particle theory, where this idea is becoming more and more abstract and mathematical. The book emphasizes common features of diverse solitons, targeting on uncovering conceptual simplicity in apparent complexity. Concerning the use of mathematics, the author distinguishes three level of complexity. But even the third, deepest, level is accessible to high school students, though at this level the reader is supposed to follow some mathematical computations.