Guido Stampacchia - Böcker

During the fifties, one of the authors, G. Stampacchia, had prepared some lecture notes on ordinary differential equations for a course in ad­ analysis. These remained for a long time unused because he was no vanced longer very interested in the study of such equations. We now see, though, that numerous applications to biology, chemistry, economics, and medicine have recently been added to the traditional ones in mechanics; also, there has been in these last years a reemergence of interest in nonlinear analy­ sis, of which the theory of ordinary differential euqations is one of the principal sources of methods and problems. Hence the idea to write a book. Our text, based on the old notes and experience gained in many courses, seminars, and conferences, both in Italy and abroad, aims to give a simple and rapid introduction to the various themes, problems, and methods of the theory of ordinary differential equations. The book has been conceived in such a way so that even the reader who has merely had a first course in calculus may be able to study it and to obtain a panoramic vision of the theory. We have tried to avoid abstract formalism, preferring instead a discursive style, which should make the book accessible to engineers and physicists without specific preparation in modern mathematics. For students of mathematics, it pro­ vides motivation for the subject of more advanced analysis courses.

This unabridged republication of the 1980 text, an established classic in the field, is a resource for many important topics in elliptic equations and systems and is the first modern treatment of free boundary problems. Variational inequalities (equilibrium or evolution problems typically with convex constraints) are carefully explained in An Introduction to Variational Inequalities and Their Applications. They are shown to be extremely useful across a wide variety of subjects, ranging from linear programming to free boundary problems in partial differential equations. Exciting new areas like finance and phase transformations along with more historical ones like contact problems have begun to rely on variational inequalities, making this book a necessity once again.