Herbert Gross, born in 1955, joined Carl Zeiss in 1982 after finishing his physics degree as specialist for optical design. Since 1995 he has been working as head of the department of optical design, while also teaching as a lecturer in Aalen and Lausanne. The new handbook is an intuitive, didactically elegant approach to the subject of optical systems and is not competed by any other work on the market. The selected board of authors, all reputed industrial experts, guarantee the timeliness of the well coordinated, coherent chapters. The third volume of this new reference focuses on the treatment of aberration. By deriving and applying image quality criteria, the reader is introduced to techniques to correct his or her optical system for aberrations and to optimize it under the chosen criteria. Thorough treatment is given to gradient and illumination systems as well as to the topic of tolerances. The volume is rounded off with a chapter on the integration of the correction scheme developed into the existing system. Finally the software package OPTALIX is introduced as an advanced solution for integrated quality management of optical systems.