Customer Reviews

Mathematical Physics

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
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Butkov gives the best explanation of Green functions I have ever read.

His treatments of vector spaces and tensors are also among the best I have encountered. The notation can be a little clunky, but you get used to it and he really gets a lot from it.

The examples given are insightful and if you study and understand them, most of the excercises are certainly doable. If you find yourself writing extreme amounts when doing an excercise, then you have missed the point (or a trick -- yes, there are a few, but there are not nearly as many in Jackson, nor are they as insidious as those in Jackson.) If you keep this in mind it will really help with self-study.

There are a few errors, especially in the excercises (worst of all in the hints and given answers). They are not too difficult to spot if you use some common sense and understand the corresponding text. (Don't worry, be happy!)

Once you comprehend Butkov, Jackson (Classical Elect.) is much easier to deal with (on many levels -- Green functions, special functions, vector spaces, et.al.)

Another text which Butkov makes much more accessible is Arfken & Weber.

Note (especially with regard to math texts): it is important to understand the difference between a tutorial/primer and a reference. Butkov is an excellent example of the former. Arfken & Weber is much better when used in the latter sense.

I used this book to look for an explanation for what "Green's Functions" are, functions which are used in Electrodynamics and Quantum Mechanics. I found that the famous book by Jackson on Electrodynamics gives very little explanation or motivation about them. Butkov, however, gave a very good explanation, or hueristic description, for what they are, and gave an intuitive feel for them so they became more than just mathematical abstractions. Only then did Butkov go deeper into more mathematical nature of the "beast". It appears that he uses this same style throughout the book, and I would eventually like to go through the whole book. As it is, it is comforting to have the book available, knowing that it will be there to help me if I come across another difficult subject of mathematical physics that a teacher or assigned text doesn't explain very well. This would be a good book for the student of physics to keep around as a resource. I can't give it a 10 since I have only read part of it.

This text offers a comprehensive, elementary and easily understandable introduction to the traditional topics of mathematics that are most readily applicable to the physical sciences. These include differential equations, vector spaces, green functions and Fourier analysis. The motivation is entirely physical which should appeal to the practicing engineer or beginning physicist.

The chief disadvantage lies in its high price, regrettably typical of most text books.

The mathematically sophisticated reader interested in more advanced topics useful in, say, particle physics or field theory, will be far better served by the wonderful work by Choquet-Bruhat and DeWitt-Morette enttled "Analyis, Manifolds and Physics" which remains a classic. Excellent treatments can also be found in "Mathematics for Physicists" by Dennery and Kryzwicki and "Mathematics of Classical and Quantum Physics" by Byron and Robert, both of which offer well written introductions to more advanced topics at irresistible prices.

This book is useful that the steps are clear with details. For example, instead of just identifying the mathematical equations and giving the solutions in close form directly, the author tells you how the solutions (Bessel functions, Legendre functions, ..) are obtained by the Frobenius method. I like the fashion of this book rather than that written by Afken. I recommend this book if you not just satisfied by solving a physical problem but also want to know the details.

The material in this book is really helpful (all typos aside) and I thought was top notch. The problem is that the actual physical quality of the book if awful. After two weeks of use the spine with fall apart. I knew this in advance so I took it to FedEx and got it spiral bound and laminated the covers. This is working wonderfully.

I took an undergraduate course on Mathematical Physics by this book, and I didn't like it at the time. Now, rereading some sections, I discovered once again that I simply do not like this textbook. It is mediocre on some expositions and at some parts amounts to no more than a bunch of formulas, e.g., in the exposition of the so-called "special functions" of mathematical physics.

On the upside, it has chapters on Hilbert space and Green's functions, so that it is, after all, a reasonably comprehensive compendium of classical mathematical physics.

I personally prefer the book by Mary L. Boas, Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences, now in its 3rd. ed. Once you have gone through Boas, you may want to pick the very nice, accessible, complete, modern, and cheap book by Byron & Fuller.

In summary, maybe you just don't need the book by Butkov, specially at such a high price.

I've already taught from this book. It will not lead you to an irrepressible passion for mathematics, even in the applied version, but it does its job of simplifying the thing, using the physicsl context to make some arguments plausible, and of providing a modicum of connective tissue among the diverse topics. There are some mistakes in the discussion of convergence of series, but physicists rarely care about these things anyway.Where are those wonderful books of yesterday, like Sommerfeld's "Partial Differential Equations of Physics"?

Technically, all the essentials are there to use as a textbook, but the author makes it kinda difficult to follow the math. Also, the paperback version is extremely fragile, as the pages sometimes break loose from the cover.