After three decades since the first nearly complete edition of John von Neumann's papers, this book is a valuable selection of those papers and excerpts of his books that are most characteristic of his activity, and reveal that of his continuous influence.The results receiving the 1994 Nobel Prizes in economy deeply rooted in Neumann's game theory are only minor traces of his exceptionally broad spectrum of creativity and stimulation.The book is organized by the specific subjects-quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, operator algebra, hydrodynamics, economics, computers, science and society. In addition, one paper which was written in German will be translated and published in English for the first time.The sections are introduced by short explanatory notes with an emphasis on recent developments based on von Neumann's contributions. An overall picture is provided by Ulam's, one of his most intimate partners in thinking, 1958 memorial lecture. Facsimilae and translations of some of his personal letters and a newly completed bibliography based on von Neumann's own careful compilation are added.

"Convexity of sets and functions are extremely simple notions to define, so it may be somewhat surprising the depth and breadth of ideas that these notions give rise to. It turns out that convexity is central to a vast number of applied areas, including Statistical Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Mathematical Economics, and Statistics,and that many inequalities, including Hl̲der's and Minkowski's inequalities, are related to convexity. An introductory chapter (1) includes a study of regularity properties of convex functions, some inequalities (Hl̲der, Minkowski, and Jensen), the Hahn-Banach theorem as a statement about extending tangents to convex functions, and the introduction of two constructions that will play major roles later in this book: the Minkowski gauge of a convex set and the Legendre transform of a function"--

Comprehensive and state-of-the art study of the basic concepts and principles of variational analysis and generalized differentiation in both finite-dimensional and infinite-dimensional spaces Presents numerous applications to problems in the optimization, equilibria, stability and sensitivity, control theory, economics, mechanics, etc.