The papers in these proceedings were presented at an Inter­ national Symposium on Stiff Differential Systems, which was held at the Hotel Quellenhof, Wildbad, Federal Republic of Germany, October 4-6, 1973. The
sumposium was organized by IBM Germany and sponsored by the IBM World Trade Corporation. On behalf of all the participants we wish to express our appreciation to the sponsors and organizers for their generous
support,particularly to Dr. G. HUbner, representing Scientific Relations, IBM Germany, and Dr. G. Kozak, representing IBM World Trade Headquarters, New York. The purpose of the conference was to provide an intensive treatment
of all apsects of a difficult problem class, stiff differential systems. Some major fields of interest of attendees and contributors are: 1) Modeling and problem solving in scien­ tific and technological applications, 2)
Qualitative theory of stiff systems, 3) Numerical Analysis, including design, valida­ tion, and comparison of algorithms, as well as error and stability analysis, and 4) Computer Science, in particular problem-oriented
programming languages, program packages, and applications-oriented computer architecture.