Symposium on Algorithms (ESA '93), held in Bad Honnef, nearBoon, in Germany, September 30 - October 2, 1993. Thesymposium is intended to launchan annual series ofinternational conferences, held in early fall, covering thefield of algorithms. Within the scope of the symposium liesall research on algorithms, theoretical as well as applied,that is carried out in the fields of computer science anddiscrete applied mathematics. The symposium aims to cater toboth of these research communities and to intensify theexchange between them. The volume contains 35 contributed papers selected from 101proposals submitted in response to the call for papers, aswell as three invited lectures: "Evolution of an algorithm"by Michael Paterson, "Complexity of disjoint paths problemsin planar graphs" by Alexander Schrijver, and "Sequencecomparison and statistical significance in molecularbiology" by Michael S. Waterman.