INTRODUCTION TO SPECIAL ISSUE

    As its name suggests, the Geoffrey J. Butler Memorial Conference in Differential Equations and Mathematical Biology is dedicated to the memory and honor of our friend and colleague, Geoff Butler, who passed away at the age of forty-two on July 13, 1986 after a brief illness. His love of mathematics and mathematical education is well evidenced by his published works and his involvement with the Canadian and International Olympiads.

    The third Butler Memorial Conference was held on the University of Alberta campus, June 26-29, 1996. It was sponsored by the University of Alberta, the Department of Mathematical Sciences, the Applied Mathematics Institute and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The G.J. Butler Lecturer was Professor Jack K. Hale of the Georgia Institute of Technology, who gave three talks under the title "Stable Patterns and Synchronization". Other keynote speakers were K.L. Cooke (Pomona College), C. Cosner (University of Miami), W. Langford (Guelph University), J.W. Macki (University of Alberta), J.S. Muldowney (University of Alberta), J. Selgrade (North Carolina State University), K. Sigmund (University of Vienna) and X.- Q. Zhao (Academia Sinica, Beijing).

    The Proceedings of this conference are sufficiently large (unlike the previous two Proceedings each of which was published in a single issue of the Rocky Mountain Journal of Mathematics), they will comprise eight issues, namely Volume 5, numbers 3 and 4, and Volume 6, numbers 1 to 4, of the Canadian Applied Mathematics Quarterly, as well as Volume 11, numbers 1 and 2, of Natural Resource Modeling.

    We are grateful to the other members of the organizing committee, W. Allegretto, J.W. Macki, J.S. Muldowney and J.W.H. So, for their help and advice, and to Elizabeth Cunningham who really ran the conference in an efficient manner.