The proceedings featured in this book grew out of a conference attended by 40 applied mathematicians and physicists which was held at the International Center for Research in Mathematics in Luminy, France, in May 1995. This volume reviews recent developments in the mathematical theory of water waves. The following aspects are considered: modeling of various wave systems, mathematical and numerical analysis of the full water wave problem (the Euler equations with a free surface) and of asymptotic models (Korteweg-de Vries, Boussinesq, Benjamin-Ono, Davey-Stewartson, Kadomtsev-Petviashvili, etc.), and existence and stability of solitary waves.