Seminar - Jean Mawhin

[Alessandro Fonda]

Prof. Jean Mawhin, from the University of Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium)  
will deliver the talk

      "Self-sustained oscillations, limit cycles and Hilbert  
sixteenth problem"

on wednesday 9 March, at 5.00 p.m., in Aula Morin,  Dipartimento di  
Matematica e Informatica, University of Trieste, second floor.

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Abstract: The aim of the lecture is to sketch and, sometimes, to  
refine the history of self-sustained oscillations or auto- 
oscillations in science and technology, and that of the mathematical  
concept of limit cycle of a planar ordinary differential equations.   
Contributions of Rayleigh, Poincare', Janet, van der Pol, Lienard,  
Andronov among others will be described, as well as Hilbert sixteenth  
problem and its refined version by Smale.