The link between Calculus of Variations and Partial Differential Equations has always been strong, because variational problems produce, via their Euler-Lagrange equation, a differential equation and, conversely, a differential equation can often be studied by variational methods. At the summer school in Pisa in September 1996, Luigi Ambrosio and Norman Dancer each gave a course on a classical topic (the geometric problem of evolution of a surface by mean curvature, and degree theory with appli ...