Stewart created this text at the suggestion, and with the collaboration, of the mathematics department of Texas A&M University. With an early introduction to vectors and vector functions, the approach should be of use to engineering students who use vectors early in their curriculum. Stewart begins by introducing vectors in Chapter 1, along with their basic operations, such as addition, scalar multiplication, and dot product. The definition of vector functions and parametric curves is given at the end of Chapter 1 using a two-dimensional trajectory of a projectile as motivation. Limits, derivatives, and integrals of vector functions are interwoven throughout the subsequent chapters.
James Stewart received the M.S. degree from Stanford University and the Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. After two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of London, he became Professor of Mathematics at McMaster University. His research has been in harmonic analysis and functional analysis. Stewart's books include a series of high school textbooks as well as a best-selling series of calculus textbooks. He is also co-author, with Lothar Redlin and Saleem Watson, of a series of college algebra and precalculus textbooks. Translations of his books include those in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Korean, Chinese, Greek, and Indonesian.
A talented violinst, Stewart was concertmaster of the McMaster Symphony Orchestra for many years and played professionally in the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra. Having explored connections between music and mathematics, Stewart has given more than 20 talks worldwide on Mathematics and Music and is planning to write a book that attempts to explain why mathematicians tend to be musical.
Stewart was named a Fellow of the Fields Institute in 2002 and was awarded an honorary D.Sc. in 2003 by McMaster University. The library of the Fields Institute is named after him. The James Stewart Mathematics Centre was opened in October, 2003, at McMaster University.
