This volume appears parallel to the conference in honor of Luc Tartar on
the occasion of his 60th birthday held in Paris, July 2007 at the CMAP
of the Ecole Polytechnique.
Partly in collaboration with François Murat, Luc Tartar has specialized
in the development of new mathematical tools for solving the partial
differential equations of continuum mechanics (homogenization,
compensated compactness, H-measures), pioneering the study of
microstructures compatible with the partial differential equations
describing the physical balance laws, and the constitutive relations.
He likes to point out the defects of many of the models which are used,
as a natural way to achieve the goal of improving our understanding of
mathematics and of continuum mechanics.