Variational Calculus

Jean-Pierre Bourguignon is the Nicolaas Kuiper Honorary Professor at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, Bures-sur-Yvette, France, where he was director from 1994 to 2013. His research interests are in differential geometry, in particular its relations with partial differential equations and mathematical physics. He was president of the Société Mathématique de France (1990–1992) and of the European Mathematical Society (1995–1998). He received the Paul Langevin prize from the Académie des Sciences de Paris in 1987 and the Physical Sciences and Mathematics Prize from the Comité du Rayonnement Français in 1997.

“The present book … can be considered as an advanced book including important notions, results and methods from analysis and geometry. … We consider that the book is an excellent pedagogical work, containing the essential elements of Variational Calculus. It is addressed to advanced students and researchers in the field.” (Gheorghe Moroşanu, zbMATH 1505.49002, 2023)

• Part I The Analytic Setting.- A First Generalisation of the Notion of Space: Spaces of Infinite Dimension.- Banach Spaces and Hilbert Spaces.- Linearisation and Local Inversion of Differentiable Maps.- Part II The Geometric Setting.- Some Applications of Differential Calculus.- New Generalisation of the Notion of a Space: Configuration Spaces.- Tangent Vectors and Vector Fields on Configuration Spaces.- Regular Points and Critical Points of Numerical Functions.- Part III The Calculus of Variations.- Configuration Spaces of Geometric Objects.- The Euler-Lagrange Equations.- The Hamiltonian Viewpoint.- Symmetries and Conversation Laws.- Appendix: Basic Elements of Topology.- References.- Notation Index.- Subject Index.