Customer Reviews

Green's Functions and Boundary Value Problems (Pure and Applied Mathematics)

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Actually, I preferred the first (2 volume) edition of this work and used the first volume along with Whittaker and Watson to teach first semester math methods to physics and engineering students. This book provides the most readable, systematic approach to boundary-value problems, based on Weyl's lemma. Not to be compared with the usual cookbooks on math methods because it shows you how to construct nonstandard orthogonal expansions, not merely the usual Fourier, Bessel and Legendre variety. Also very good on Dirac's delta funaction. For second semester, for years I also used Bender and Orszag.

G is called 'the Green function' and not 'the Green's function' (one does not say 'the Bessel's function').

This is a classic text. The authors not only knows much more than is in the book but also has a clear idea about the applied side of math. A close competitor is Sobolev's book on PDE's.

This is by far the worst textbook I've ever been forced to use for a class. The author provides virtually no example problems with clearly demonstrated solutions, repeatedly skips large portions of derivations and proofs, and introduces new concepts in the problem sets for each chapter with little or no explanation. He makes sure to include comments like "clearly, ..." after jumping 14 steps in a derivation or proof just so you know he's so much smarter than you. I'm going to burn it at the end of the semester.