Volume III of the Collected Works of V.I. Arnold contains papers written in the years 1972 to 1979. The main theme emerging in Arnold's work of this period is the development of singularity theory of smooth functions and mappings.

The volume also contains papers by V.I. Arnold on catastrophe theory and on A.N. Kolmogorov's school, his prefaces to Russian editions of several books related to singularity theory, V. Arnold's lectures on bifurcations of discrete dynamical systems, as well as a review by V.I. Arnold and Ya.B. Zeldovich of V.V. Beletsky's book on celestial mechanics.

Vladimir Arnold was one of the great mathematical scientists of our time. He is famous for both the breadth and the depth of his work. At the same time he is one of the most prolific and outstanding mathematical authors.