The second Painlevé hierarchy and the stationary KdV hierarchy (Q1769601)

The soliton equations such as Korteweg-de Vries equation are members of infinite sequences of PDEs known as hierarchies. The six classical Painlevé equations are intimately related to soliton equations. In the paper the author reviews methods of constructing hierarchies for the Painlevé equations as reductions of PDE hierarchies. The author's main focus lay on methods of deducing explicit information about solutions of hierarchies. In particular, he reviewed the construction of periodic solutions of the stationary KdV equation, in order to find solutions of the second Painlevé hierarchy. Also in the paper the attention is payed to problems of the transcendental nature of the solutions of the higher-order members of the hierarchy.