Godunov Methods

Book excerpt: This edited review book on Godunov methods contains 97 articles, all of which were presented at the international conference on Godunov Methods: Theory and Applications, held at Oxford in October 1999, to commemo rate the 70th birthday of the Russian mathematician Sergei K. Godunov. The meeting enjoyed the participation of 140 scientists from 20 countries; one of the participants commented: everyone is here, meaning that virtu ally everybody who had made a significant contribution to the general area of numerical methods for hyperbolic conservation laws, along the lines first proposed by Godunov in the fifties, was present at the meeting. Sadly, there were important absentees, who due to personal circumstance could not at tend this very exciting gathering. The central theme o{ the meeting, and of this book, was numerical methods for hyperbolic conservation laws fol lowing Godunov's key ideas contained in his celebrated paper of 1959. But Godunov's contributions to science are not restricted to Godunov's method.