Introduction

The general themes of this book attempt to capture timely issues of modeling, theoretical computation, and mathematical theory. Engineers, scientists, and mathematicians now accept nonlinear systems of the scope developed here as basic for the analysis and prediction of the processes of charge transport, in a self-consistently determined electric field. In this brief introductory chapter, we shall expand upon the remarks of the preface, and discuss the goals of the book, and their development. Some historical detail will be furnished, insofar as it relates to the thematic aims.