Numerical methods and applications

This volume of the Springer Series “Lecture Notes in Computer Science” c- tains refereed papers which were presented at the Fifth International Conf- ence on Numerical Methods and Applications, NMA 2002, held in Borovets, Bulgaria, during 20–24 August 2002. The NMA 2002 Conference was organized by the Central Laboratory for Parallel Processing at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in cooperation with SIAM (Society for Industrial and Applied Mat- matics) and GAMM (Gesellschaft fur ¨ Angewandte Mathematik und Mechanik). Co-organizers of this traditional scienti?c meeting were the Institute of Mat- matics and Informatics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics at the University of So?a. The conference was devoted to the 70th anniversary of the distinguished Bulgarian mathematician academician Blagovest Sendov — the founder of the Bulgarian school in - merical analysis, the teacher of dozens of Ph. D. students, the author of more than 270 papers, textbooks, and monographs. He is the scholar who has been at the center of the mathematical life in Bulgaria for about 50 years. Over the years he headed the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the University of So?a, the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of the University of So?a, the C- tral Laboratory for Parallel Processing of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the Department of Mathematical Modeling of the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, the Union of Bulgarian Mathematicians, etc. He represented with distinctionBulgarianscienceinsuchworld-recognizedorganizationsasIFIP (- ternationalFederationforInformationProcessing),theInternationalAssociation ofUniversities,theInternationalCouncilofScienti?cUnions,theBalkanMat- maticalUnion,etc.