Applied Functional Analysis Applications to Mathematical Physics [Hardcover]

The first part of a self-contained, elementary textbook, combining linear functional analysis, nonlinear functional analysis, numerical functional analysis, and their substantial applications with each other. As such, the book addresses undergraduate students and beginning graduate students of mathematics, physics, and engineering who want to learn how functional analysis elegantly solves mathematical problems which relate to our real world. Applications concern ordinary and partial differential equations, the method of finite elements, integral equations, special functions, both the Schroedinger approach and the Feynman approach to quantum physics, and quantum statistics. As a prerequisite, readers should be familiar with some basic facts of calculus. The second part has been published under the title, Applied Functional Analysis: Main Principles and Their Applications.A theory is the more impressive, the simpler are its premises, the more distinct are the things it connects, and the broader is its range of applicability. Albert Einstein There are two different ways of teaching mathematics, namely, (i) the systematic way, and (ii) the application-oriented way. More precisely, by (i), I mean a systematic presentation of the material governed by the desire for mathematical perfection and completeness of the results. In contrast to (i), approach (ii) starts out from the question What are the most important applications? and then tries to answer this question as quickly as possible. Here, one walks directly on the main road and does not wander into all the nice and interesting side roads. The present book is based on the second approach. It is addressed to undergraduate and beginning graduate students of mathematics, physics, and engineering who want to learn how functional analysis elegantly solves mathematical problems that are related to our real world and that have played an important role in the history of mathematics. The reader should sense that the theory is l³«