Mathematical Methods in Optimization of Differential Systems

This work is a revised and enlarged edition of a book with the same title published in Romanian by the Publishing House of the Romanian Academy in 1989. It grew out of lecture notes for a graduate course given by the author at the University if Ia~i and was initially intended for students and readers primarily interested in applications of optimal control of ordinary differential equations. In this vision the book had to contain an elementary description of the Pontryagin maximum principle and a