Malte Henkel, born in 1960, received his Master's degree from the University of Bonn in 1984, and his PhD in 1987, when he also won the annual prize of the Minerva Foundation. From that year onward he has been a long-term visitor in many institutes, including the ITP at Santa Barbara, USA, the SPhT at Saclay, France, and the universities of Oxford, UK, Vienna, Austria, Padova, Italy, and Lisbon, Portugal. In 1995 he was appointed a professor at the University of Nancy I. His current research encompasses equilibrium and non-equilibrium phase transitions, using field-theoretical and numerical methods in general. In particular, his current focus is on dynamical scaling behaviour realised in ageing phenomena far from equilibrium. He has published well over a hundred articles and three monographs, one of which is Volume I of this set.

• 1. Ageing phenomena; 2. Exactly solvable models; 3. Simple ageing: an overview; 4. Local scale-invariance I: z = 2; 5. Local scale invariance II: z ≠ 2; 6. Lifshitz Points: Strongly Anisotropic Equilibrium Critical Points. Appendices: A. Equilibrium Models, D. Langevin Equations and Path Integrals, I. Cluster Algorithms: Competing Interactions. J. Fractional Derivatives. K. Conformally Invariant Interacting Fields. L. Lie Groups and Lie Algebras: a Reminder. M. On the Central Limit Theorem. Q. Lexique/Lexicon. Solutions. Frequently Used Symbols. Abbreviations. References. List of Tables. List of Figures. Index

From the reviews: "This book is the second of a two-volume work on non-equilibrium phase transitions ... . a well written and valuable introduction to these problems, for mathematicians as well as for physicists. ... The book finishes with several appendices, where the reader can be reminded of useful physical and mathematical results ... a large section where the almost one hundred problems proposed throughout the book are fully worked out, and a huge and very useful reference list of more than seven hundred fifty items." (Fernando Pestana da Costa, Mathematical Reviews, Issue 2011 j)