Complex Analysis (Paperback)

by L. Ahlfors (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
A standard source of information of functions of one complex variable, this text has retained its wide popularity in this field by being consistently rigorous without becoming needlessly concerned with advanced or overspecialized material. Difficult points have been clarified, the book has been reviewed for accuracy, and notations and terminology have been modernized. Chapter 2, Complex Functions, features a brief section on the change of length and area under conformal mapping, and much of Chapter 8, Global-Analytic Functions, has been rewritten in order to introduce readers to the terminology of germs and sheaves while still emphasizing that classical concepts are the backbone of the theory. Chapter 4, Complex Integration, now includes a new and simpler proof of the general form of Cauchy's theorem. There is a short section on the Riemann zeta function, showing the use of residues in a more exciting situation than in the computation of definite integrals. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author
Retired --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: McGraw Hill Higher Education (September 1, 1980)
• ISBN-10: 0070850089
• ISBN-13: 978-0070850088
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #721,721 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars $143?!?!, February 8, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Complex Analysis (Hardcover)

This is a classic complex analysis text, a pleasure to read and covering all the usual topics. The prerequisites are modest; ideally, one will be familiar with the material in Rudin's "Princples of Mathematical Analysis," but a good, mathematically oriented calculus course (Spivak's "Calculus" is beautiful) is quite sufficient.

That said, the price tag is ridiculous. It was bad enough at $90 (judging by previous reviewers, that was back in the ancient days of 2001). The last edition of this book is dated 1979. It's used in graduate courses all around the world. That means that used copies are not hard to come by.

For $143, one can buy a used copy of Ahlfors, and *new* copies of Conway's and Needham's complex analysis books, and still have pocket change left. That's the course I would recommend.

40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A classic at an obscene price, January 21, 2006

By	Stan Vernooy (Henderson, NV) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Complex Analysis (Hardcover)

This book has for decades been THE classic graduate level text in Complex Analysis. It is important to point out that it is not for beginners. To learn complex analysis from the ground up, my own recommendations are the book by Saff & Snider or the somewhat dated, but delightfully conversational book by Stewart and Tall.

Not only does this book require some previous understanding of Complex Analysis, but it also requires that mysterious ability called "mathematical maturity" - the ability to fill in omitted steps and details when following an argument. But, for a person posessing the prerequisites, this is a fine book.

However, any review of this book would be incomplete if it didn't address the issue of price. Advanced math books are all expensive, it is true. But this book is a particularly egregious case of price-gouging. For one thing, the book was written many years ago, so the publisher is not trying to recover any recent high cost of paying the author for his work. Secondly, the book is only something like 336 pages long (much shorter, for example, than a mystery novel by Elizabeth George). It comes out to about 40 cents per page!

Math students, as a rule, are not wealthy people. The price of this book is simply offensive. You can save more than 25% off the price of this book and get BOTH volumes of the Conway book, "Functions of One Complex Variable". I'm not thoroughly familiar with that Conway book, but I've browsed it online. It seems to be well written and has more material (in the two volumes together) than this (Ahlfors) book has. Furthermore, just in principle, I don't think a publisher should be rewarded for this kind of unwarranted greed and price-gouging. Refuse to buy this until the price becomes more reasonable.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Classic Masterpiece, June 14, 2000

By	Eze (Valencia, Spain) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Complex Analysis (Hardcover)

This book has been, since its first edition in 1953, the standard textbook for rigorously learning complex analysis, and not without a reason. The wonderful theory of this branch of mathematics is appropriately emphasized and thoroughly constructed, leading to more general and precise results than most textbooks. While the constant appearance of new texts on the field can only help appreciate the subject from a different perspective, few give you such a deep and serious treatment like this gem.

Postscript: An earlier reviewer claims that Ahlfors never defines the set of complex numbers, while this is indeed done in the fourth through sixth pages in a much more analytical way than generally found elsewhere. It is quite possible to dislike this author's style or approach (or anybody's for that matter), but it would be difficult to charge Ahlfors with being sloppy with his writing.