It is difficult to imagine how our highly evolved technological society would function, or how life would even exist on our planet, if polymers did not exist. The intensive study of polymeric systems, which has been under way for several decades, has recently yielded new insights into the properties of assemblies of these complex molecules and the physical principles that govern their behavior. These developments have included new concepts to describe aspects of the many body behavior in these systems, microscopic analyses that bring our understanding of these systems much closer to our understanding of simple liquids and solids, and the discovery of novel chemistry that these molecules can catalyze.§This special topic volume of Advances in Chemical Physics surveys a number of these recent accomplishments. Supplemented with more than 250 illustrations, it provides a significant, up-to-date selection of papers by inter-nationally recognized researchers.§Topics include:§Theory of Polyelectrolyte Solutions§Star Polymers: Experiment, Theory, and Simulation§Tethered Polymer Layers§Living Polymers§Transport and Kinetics in Electroactive Polymers§Self-contained, authoritative, and timely, Polymeric Systems makes the cutting edge of polymer research available to scientists in every branch of chemical physics.§Contributors to POLYMERIC SYSTEMS§JEAN-LOUIS BARRAT, Département de Physique des Matériaux, Université Claude Bernard-Lyon l, France§A. BAUMGÄRTNER, Institut für Festkörperforschung, Germany§M. A. CARIGNANO, Department of Chemistry, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana§LEWIS J. FETTERS, Corporate Research Science Laboratories, Exxon Research and Engineering Company, Annandale, New Jersey§SANDRA C. GREER, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Maryland at College Park§GARY S. GREST, Corporate Research Science Laboratories, Exxon Research and Engineering Company, Annandale, New Jersey§JOHN S. HUANG, Corporate Research Science Laboratories, Exxon Research and Engineering Company, Annandale, New Jersey§JEAN-FRANÇOIS JOANNY, Institut Charles Sadron, France§MICHAEL E. G. LYONS, Electroactive Polymer Research Group, Physical Chemistry Laboratory, University of Dublin, Ireland§M. MUTHUKUMAR, Department of Polymer Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts§DIETER RICHTER, Institut für Festkörperforschung, Germany§I. SZLEIFER, Department of Chemistry, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana
