Customer Reviews

Basic Partial Differential Equations

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After searching through dozens of texts on PDEs, this one not only has the clairity to explain approaches and techniques to tackle different types of PDEs in a methodical manner, but also has the breadth to keep you busy learning! Really a great text.

I was looking for an easy and readable book on basic partial differential equations after taking an ordinary differential equations course at my local community college. Since I had an excellent teacher for the ordinary differential equations course the textbook was not as important. This was truly fortunate since the ODE text was only minimally helpful!

However, David Bleecker's PDE text is a wonderful and easy read for a difficult and challenging second course in this area. I used it as a self-study course guide and found it truly helpful in getting an overview and understanding the basics of the course. I'm sure it would be invaluable to anyone interested in this course and definitely as an aid for anyone taking this course at the college or graduate level.

Good luck!!

This book is quite simply one of the BEST partial differential equation books I've read. I've read Strauss' PDE: An Introduction 1st Edition, and as far as I can tell that book is pretty worthless. Also, I've read the PDE book by Haberman, and it's nearly up to this book but not quite. For Strauss' book, all it does is mention things and doesn't explain them either at all or it explains them in as little detail as possible with an expectation the student is either a graduate mathematics student or is very well versed (an expert A++ student) in ODE's and other math. A PDE book should be VERY THICK much like a calc. book, but Strauss' book is a thin, little thing that's about 425 pages, including the index. However, don't let the page number fool you, because it's printed in large font and the book is very small in dimensions. Bleecker and Csorda's book is 735 pages, including the index. However, it's the size of a regular textbook, and there are hundreds more worked examples and derivations of procedure/methods. So, it's SIGNIFICANTLY larger. Also, Haberman's book is nearly 600 pages, including the index, and it's a large book with smaller font but it doesn't have as many worked examples; so, you get the comparison. I only mention size because it usually indicates detail.

Let me tell you, this book is detailed and it assumes the reader knows NOTHING about PDE's and how to solve them. That's how general math books should be written, in my opinion. I think PDE's are as important and fundamental as calculus and the subject should be taught as if it were that important. ODE's are of high importance, but there are so many excellent ODE books; that isn't really the case when it comes to PDE books. This is probably because they hope you had a good ODE book/teacher and don't want to "bore" you.

That being said, I really don't know why this book isn't used that often at universities and colleges, but it should be. It may be because it's not quite an advanced/basic book in one. It's probably only for a one semester course. However, I think that it's every bit as mathematically rigorous as Strauss' book if not more so; only, it actually seeks to impart knowledge to the reader. Strauss' book does a poor job at that, and go look at the ratings if you don't believe me. If you're stuck at a school that uses Strauss' book, this is an excellent supplement or even replacement. It follows Strauss' book in organization fairly closely, but most PDE books present things in the same order anyway.

I know that my review isn't very detailed, but I just want you to see for yourself how good this book really is. It's not a waste of beer money! Get it, even if you think you're too smart for it, because at the very least it would make an excellent reference.

I think this is an excellent book for self study of PDE's. It's written at a rigorous level, yet the authors actually explain things in a clear, concise way. So many other upper undergraduate/graduate level texts seems to purposely leave out key information in order to allow the professor to fill in the *gaping* holes, or to allow the student to struggle with it. If you're self studying, those gaps in other texts can bog you down for days at at a time. The book covers most of the good stuff, from the heat equation, wave equation, and Laplace's equation, to a big chapter on Fourier Series (ch4) which proves many of the convergence results. So far I think it's a great book.

Partial Differential Equations is an extremely important - and difficult - subject, and unfortunately many books (namely Strauss among others) assume a prior knowledge of PDE's that makes it extremely difficult to learn the subject. Fortunately this book assumes no prior knowledge of PDE's and patiently builds the reader's understanding.

There are many worked examples and they are dissected in a great amount of depth to further the reader's comprehension. Though there is still a great deal of effort in learning PDE's, you will have an easier time learning from "Basic Partial Differential Equations" than from Strauss and you will get greater depth than from Farlow's book.

I can't think of a better book for learning PDE's than this one.

Comparing Bleecker and Csordas with Strauss' classic text, I would say this: if Strauss was a novel, in each chapter you would meet a new person and see the world from his perspective and you would finish the book without ever knowing that the people in the book were living together in the same family. A cool idea for a novel, maybe, but not for a math text. Bleecker and Csordas would be like Proust, no stone left unturned. (Bleeker and Csordas is next to John M. Lee's texts in terms of readability, too.) Oh, and there's a crazy story on the web somewhere about how Bleecker went mad and tried to burn down his office... too bad, because the world could use more math texts written by this duo.