Differential Equations,: With Applications and Historical Notes

by George F. Simmons

Book Overview

A revision of a much-admired text distinguished by the exceptional prose and historical/mathematical context that have made Simmons' books classics. The Second Edition includes expanded coverage of Laplace transforms and partial differential equations as well as a new chapter on numerical methods.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0070573751
• ISBN13: 9780070573758
• Release Date: January 1972
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
• Length: 465 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Best of the trio

This book is too good to be true, but it is true, so... Simmons is an amazing writer, that is a fact. This book is absolutely fantastic and in my view better at exposing the content (aka to learn from) than Tenenbaum's and Coddington's. I'm not saying their books are bad, but that I think this one is better for someone who has had almost no contact with differential equations. Tenenbaum is a remarkable complement for this book, and Coddington is awesome. But hey... That is my opinion

One of the best

I have read this book in my first year of engineering along with a few others related to calculus. But compared to this book, the other books seem a lot less effective.The subject treatment has sufficient detail for the really interested people and is sufficiently concise for those seeking nifty tricks and methods to solve ODEs.Some higher end stuff such as non-linear DEs has also been treated well. Though I didn't know a word about these particular equations, the book taught me well enough to handle a few types of those.Great book!

A superb introduction - and then some

One of the best written books on the subject I've seen. As long as you're prepared to follow his anaylsis line by line (no skimming at the back there) you can give yourself some serious mathematical muscle.He derives the first type of elliptical integral from the motion of the pendulum at page 21 (on my elderly foreign-printed software version I've had for years). That's the level it's pitched at.

Excellent!!!

Each mathematic's book has its particularities. I had said before the Tanembaum book was the one better than I had on differential equations, considering its easiness reading , its methodology and its organization, but evidently these three elements can be present in many other books. This is the case of the present book, which I consider excellent. This is a great book, a very well achieved work . It introduces each element interesting the reader for the following topics, with exercises very well planned according to the exposed theory and with answers at the end of the book. Each chapter contains a historical note that will be extremely instructive and stimulants for the reader that doesn't feel pleasure for the exact sciences . Of special mention they are the chapter 6 (Some special functions of the mathematical physics), the chapter 8 (non lineal equations), and the chapter 9 (calculus of variations). The calculation of variations is an introduction to this branch, but I assure you that when reading it, you kept desires of treating other texts specialized in the topic like that of Sagan. You won't find in this book any complication, and you will be satisfied considering that it is a book for undergraduates, an excellent introduction to the differential equations. Among the book of Tanembaum, Derry Grossman, D'prima, and the introductions of differential equations of C. R. Wylie and Kreiszig in their books of advanced mathematics for engineering, I keep this. If you plan to learn differential equations, if you want to have a really good text as introduction to the topic, then this is the book to buy, you won't lose your money.

Great book

This is an absolutely wonderful book to learn differential equations from. The explanations are for the most part very clear and there is just enough detail, not enough to qualify as gruesome! The layout and organisation is also excellent and makes the book easier to read, althoguht I suppose this could be subjective. There are also numerous problems - lots of practice! - and you can check your answers against those in the back of the book. I need differential equations for my discipline and although the class is going rather slowly, I think I shall be able to get alot from the book. For the student learning DE primarily from the book, this is just about all you can ask for. I would give this book a rating for ease of use by such a student similar to or better than the Bostock and Chandler A-level series.

An absolute gem of textbook!

I've taught upper division students from this book (and the first edition) 5-6 times for over a decade. I remain impressed by the broad range of topics from which the teacher and reader can select. As with his excellent calculus textbook, the author tries to show students how mathematics is a human activity, a subject that developed in response to actual needs and which is still lively and developing. No part of mathematics illustrates this development better than the topic of differential equations, which was invented to solve pressing problems in astronomy. One example: In Newton's time, accurate location of position on the open seas was an unsolved problem, crucial to commerce. New techniques from differential equations led to the ready calculation of tables which, together with the invention of Harrison's sea-going chronometer, effectively solved the navigation problem. Differential equations lie at the core of the physical sciences and engineering and are proving increasingly valuable in biology and medicine. Simmons' book will not appeal to readers who want merely recipes with examples of their use. Such readers might prefer the excellent books from the Schaum's Outline Series. Those readers who want to see vital mathematics well presented, those readers who think that mathematics stops at trigonomerty or the calculus, those readers who want to use differential equations intelligently, and those readers who just like a cracking good mathematics story should get a copy of Simmons' book and read.Nathaniel Grossman Professor of Mathematics, UCLA