Methods of Applied Mathematics

I have used many books by Hildebrand for most of my advanced self-study in maths.This is one of the excellent texts ,covering matrices and variational methods in an easy manner.--glad that Dover has reprinted this classic work.

Francis Hildebrand is one of the best mathematicians who existed and every one of his books are diamonds. This is yet another one by him. The book contains only 3 chapters, and they are among the best treatment you can find anywhere. For anyone interested in applied mathematics, this book is a MUST READ.

This book focuses on three topics in applied math 1. matrices, 2. calculus of variations and 3. Integral equations. The development is pretty readable and seems to be targetted toengineers and physicists. (Hildebrandt taught at MIT, plenty of them around there) Hildebrandt includes a large number of exercises separated by section. The exercises are varied butinclude a very significant number of hard ones. There are answers to virtually all of these either as part of the statement of the problem or at the end of the book. This book is about senior level or first year grad level. Hildebrandt does not give lots of examples in the text, he expects the reader can get this from his large and excellent collection of problems. This is an excellent book, but Hildebrandt does expect a prettyfair familiarity with applied math and a good amount of mathematical maturity.