The main characteristic of this now classic exposition of the inverse scattering method and its applications to soliton theory is its consistent Hamiltonian approach to the theory. The nonlinear Schrödinger equation, rather than the (more usual) KdV equation, is considered as a main example. The investigation of this equation forms the first part of the book. The second part is devoted to such fundamental models as the sine-Gordon equation, Heisenberg equation, Toda lattice, etc, the classification of integrable models and the methods for constructing their solutions.
