Book Review: Verification of Sequential and Concurrent Programs by Krzysztof R. Apt and Ernst-Riidiger Olderog (Springer-Verlag New York, 1997)

in pure computer science and for computer science-oriented courses on computational biology '. I suspect, though, that most students will find this book too detailed and too complicated for thei r needs. Nonetheless, Gusfield's book is an important summary of the state of the art in pattern matchin g and an indicator of the importance biological problems have assumed among many researchers. It will undoubtedly draw new researchers to problems in biology and will hopefully encourage the m to question the importance of the problems they endeavor to solve. As Gusfield advises in hi s epilogue: `focus more on the biological quality of a computation and not exclusively on speed an d space improvements.. .learn real biology, talk extensively to biologists, and work on problems o f known biological importance '. Good advice and especially apt for those hoping to make an impac t in this exciting field. References [1] R. Cole. Tight bounds on the complexity of the Boyer-Moore pattern matching algorithm .toniades. Simian sarcoma virus one gene v-sis, is derived from the gene (or genes) encoding a platelet-derived growth factor. Specification and verification of programs is increasingly being taught to undergraduate and graduate computer science students. Courses along these lines enable students to understand and reaso n about programs as formal objects. Especially when students deal with concurrent programs do the y appreciate that program correctness —while not necessarily deep in the sense of mathematic s can be hard. There are many possibilities to consider and intuitive arguments of correctness ar e often wrong, hence there is need for program verification .