Customer Reviews

Mathematics for Physicists (Dover Books on Physics)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is easily the best book I have found for the purposes of an engineer (such as this reviewer), or perhaps a physicist, wishing to acquire certain areas of mathematics quickly. In my current work (in electromagnetics) I have had to brush-up-on/acquire topics including: function spaces; vector spaces; differential equations (with adjoint operators etc.); and Green's functions and identities. This book beats all others I consulted for this purpose. Although the book is seemless, chapters are mainly self-contained. The absence of problems/exercises is actually beneficial for my purposes, since the author has made the text correspondingly more complete. There are, however, a small number of judiciously placed examples, with quality rather than quantity being the author's apparent principle;- Once you have absorbed Professor Dennery's exposition of a particular topic, you are then aptly equiped to go to other texts for examples. In summary, this is a gem, Dennery is the 'Kubrick of maths writers'.

Dennery and Krzywicki is somewhat unusual in the sense that it puts noticeable emphasis on the mathematical formalism and it
strives to give a broader picture of each topic instead of tedious algebraic manipulations for solving certain special problems that might not be of interest to everyone.

Moreover, the authors do not try to cover a very broad spectrum of topics and rather focus on the formal aspects of fewer mathematical subjects. Altough the book`s lacking of sections on group theory and differential geometry might be seen as glaring omissions, it excels didactically in all the topics it touches upon. Especially, its treatment of complex analysis and orthogonal polynomials is absolutely exceptional.

For those who want to have a reference work that contains almost every standard topic at senior undergraduate/beginning graduate level while not taking the mathematical elegance and rigor as a priority, Arfken`s text would be a better choice. For more advanced and up-to-date account of mathematical methods, I would recommend Hassani`s (Mathematical Physics) or Szekeres`s texts.

All in all, I find this text as an excellent work on graduate level mathematical physics and refer it constantly for my work.

I strongly recommend this book! I am university lecturer and I was using it over recent years as a main source for the course
"Mathematical Methods in Physics". The material is well chosen,
supplemented with good examples which illustrate interesting and
non-trivial issues in an accessible for a student way.
It is a safe and a good buy!

I would only recommend this book to people already fairly well-versed in the topics it covers. In this book, the authors attempt to cover FAR TOO MUCH material for such a short text. As a result, the reader ends up confused and with a feeling that the author isn't telling them NEARLY everything he knows, even about the basics. The book's coverage of complex analysis is truly pitiful, and I would recommend A Course of Modern Analysis by Whittaker and Watson, even at the much higher 60 dollar price, as a useful source on this topic. Concerning such topics as Lebesgue integration, Hilbert Space, and orthonormal bases--consult good books on real-analysis and/or functional analysis rather than this book. Perhaps the author's greatest mistake is the book's complete lack of excercizes and it's few-and-far-between, weak examples of applications to problems. That said, the reason I still gave this book three stars is that it is good in one way--namely, as a reference for those who already know the material.

This is a splendid textbook for both practicing engineers and scientists, not just physicists. It is a mine of useful techniques
and formulae and I would recommend it both as a reference text
for use when working and for general dipping into.

The book covers an extraordinarily wide amount of the sort of
mathematics that both students and professionals might use on a
day-to-day basis, and it clearly written and well laid out.

A very worthwhile purchase.

I recommend getting Mathematics of Classical and Quantum Physics by Byron and Fuller (also from Dover). You'll get more (quantity and quality) for your money. Mathematics For Physicists just isn't very good, poorly written compared to Math. of C. and Q. Physics.

I studied this wonderful book for the math. for physicists class at Bogazici Univ., Turkey. We covered every part of this book, supplemented by Arfken. The elegant treatment of the diverse material is clear and easy to follow although the level is high and quite abstract. The drawbacks are lack of sufficient examples or exercises and occasional complexities in the text.

Having never really followed a course in a classroom, I have always tried to find books that are suitable for self-study. This book does an excellent job in that quarter. This is an excellent book for physicists looking for a familiar notation. Various subjects are treated rigorously and in an engaging manner. Definitely recommended for self study.

This book covers abstract vectors (as used in quantum mechanics etc) in a very concise and useful manner. The rest of the book is nice too. This is a nice compliment to a colection.

This is an excellent book if you have a little background beforehand of the topics covered in this book. Though authors try to cover the topics right from the beginning and they do it quite well, I couldn't benefit much from it as I had not studied the topics covered in this book before. I had to go back to the text books to study each of the topics and then I hope to come back to the book again. I really wouldn't blame the authors, as the topics they are trying to cover in one chapter are full fledged one-semester courses each. It is not easy to cover one semester course in one chapter.
The bottomline is - There is no way to by-pass your undergrad textbooks. if you've studied those before, this book will work very good for you.