ABSTRACT
I want to thank the editors, for having invited me to write this introductory chapter, whose initial intention was to give a historical background of mathematical and computational modeling (MMC: Modelación Matemática y Computacional in Spanish) in Mexico. However, I must confess that in order to give a fair and balanced account of the past and present state of MMC a very thorough study and research would be required. This, however, is beyond the available time and resources. Thus, the scope of this chapter was severely limited. It only contains a rather schematic and general historical perspective, together with a few examples, drawn from my own personal experience, of the MMC activities that have been carried out in Mexico up to now. We hope these examples will be useful as illustrations of what has been done so far, but the resulting picture is far from representing an integrated and fair image of the MMC activity in Mexico. In particular, there are many people working in MMC whose work deserves attention and are not here included; my apologies to them all.
