James Montaldi is Reader in Mathematics at University of Manchester. He has worked both in theoretical aspects of singularity theory as well as applications to dynamical systems, and co-edited the books: Geometric Mechanics and Symmetry: The Peyresq Lectures (Cambridge, 2005), Peyresq Lectures in Nonlinear Systems (2000), and Singularity Theory and its Applications Part 1 (1991).
'This beautiful book is in fact a course which can be viewed as addressed to undergraduate and graduate students, to junior and senior researchers, to the teaching staff (faculty), and to other people interested in the field.' Vladimir Rasvan, European Mathematical Society