On April 7–10, 1980, the American Mathematical Society sponsored a Symposium on the Mathematical Heritage of Henri Poincaré, held at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. This volume presents the written versions of all but three of the invited talks presented at this Symposium (those by W. Browder, A. Jaffe, and J. Mather were not written up for publication). In addition, it contains two papers by invited speakers who were not able to attend, S. S. Chern and L. Nirenberg.

If one traces the influence of Poincaré through the major mathematical figures of the early and midtwentieth century, it is through American mathematicians as well as French that this influence flows, through G. D. Birkhoff, Solomon Lefschetz, and Marston Morse. This continuing tradition represents one of the major strands of American as well as world mathematics, and it is as a testimony to this tradition as an opening to the future creativity of mathematics that this volume is dedicated.