This special volume contains the Proceedings of a Workshop on "Parallel Algorithms and Transputers for Optimization" which was held at the University of Siegen, on November 9, 1990. The purpose of the Workshop was to bring together those doing research on 2.lgorithms for parallel and distributed optimization and those representatives from industry and business who have an increasing demand for computing power and who may be the potential users of nonsequential approaches. In contrast to many other conferences, especially North-American, on parallel processing and supercomputers the main focus of the contributions and discussion was "problem oriented". This view reflects the following philosophy: How can the existing computing infrastructure (PC's, workstations, local area networks) of an institution or a company be used for parallel and/or distributed problem solution in optimization. This volume of the LECfURE NOTES ON ECONOMICS AND MA THEMA TICAL SYSTEMS contains most of the papers presented at the workshop, plus some additional invited papers covering other important topics related to this workshop. The papers appear here grouped according to four general areas. (1) Solution of optimization problems using massive parallel systems (data parallelism). The authors of these papers are: Lootsma; Gehne. (II) Solution of optimization problems using coarse-grained parallel approaches on multiprocessor systems (control parallelism). The authors of these papers are: Bierwirth, Mattfeld, and Stoppler; Schwartz; Boden, Gehne, and Grauer; and Taudes and Netousek.