These notes are the result of a course in dynamical systems given at
Orsay during the 1976-77 academic year. I had given a similar course at
the Gradu- ate Center of the City University of New York the previous
year and came to France equipped with the class notes of two of my
students there, Carol Hurwitz and Michael Maller. My goal was to present
Smale's n-Stability Theorem as completely and compactly as possible and
in such a way that the students would have easy access to the
literature. I was not confident that I could do all this in lectures in
French, so I decided to distribute lecture notes. I wrote these notes in
English and Remi Langevin translated them into French. His work involved
much more than translation. He consistently corrected for style,
clarity, and accuracy. Albert Fathi got involved in reading the
manuscript. His role quickly expanded to extensive rewriting and
writing. Fathi wrote (5. 1) and (5. 2) and rewrote Theorem 7. 8 when I
was in despair of ever getting it right with all the details. He kept me
honest at all points and played a large role in the final form of the
manuscript. He also did the main work in getting the manuscript ready
when I had left France and Langevin was unfortunately unavailable. I ran
out of steam by the time it came to Chapter 10. M.
