Customer Reviews

The Radon Transform (Progress in Mathematics) (Vol 5)

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I saw a previous (1st) edition of this book in my college library. It's too theoretical for engineers--useless for engineers. It's written for mathematicians. I thought this would help since u can't see what's inside online.

Everything Helgason writes is incisive, insightful, and meticulously correct. I object a little bit with the only review I found at this location. It says that this book is not very useful for engineers. That depends a lot on the engineer. As a student at Caltech, I had several professors who were quite high level engineers. These were not people confused somehow by higher mathematics and technology. They were people who fully mastered the language of mathematics and went beyond the language itself to speak it in useful technological ways. For engineers and scientists with "horsepower," everything Helgason writes provides insight that is difficult to find elsewhere. The question isn't whether it is practical learning or not. It certainly is deeply practical. The question is whether the engineer in question (the reader) has the big intellectual engine required to digest and use it. There will inevitably be full, tenured professors at lesser institutions (I know many of them) who would consider this to be impractical learning. That view will not hold water at the top schools.