Intended for the advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate student,
this lucid work links classical and modern physics through common
techniques and concepts and acquaints the reader with a variety of
mathematical tools physicists use to describe and comprehend the
physical universe.
For the physicist, mathematics is a language, or shorthand, for
constructing workable models (necessarily approximate and incomplete) of
aspects of physical reality. The present text, by a noted professor of
physics at McGill University, Montreal, deals in an exceptionally
well-organized way with some of the crucial mathematical tools used to
construct such models.
Contents include: I: The Vibrating String; II. Linear Vector Spaces;
III. The Potential Equation; IV: Fourier and Laplace Transforms and
Their Applications; V. Propagation and Scattering of Waves; VI. Problems
of Diffusion and Attenuation; VII. Probability and Stochastic Processes;
VIII. Fundamental Principles of Quantum Mechanics; IX. Some Soluble
Problems of Quantum Mechanics; X. Quantum Mechanics of Many-body
Problems.
A special helpful feature of this volume is a Prelude to each chapter,
which outlines the topics with which the chapter deals. In addition to
providing a guide to the organization of its contents, it indicates the
mathematical background assumed and calls attention to those methods and
concepts which have an application in different physical problems.
Relevant test problems are interspersed throughout the text to test the
student's grasp of the material, while brief bibliographies at the
chapter ends suggest further reading.
Ideal as a primary or supplementary text, Mathematical Analysis of
Physical Problems will reward any reader seeking a firmer grasp of the
mathematical procedures by which physicists unlock the secrets of the
universe.
