P Lax – författare

Mathematics is vigorously and brilliantly pursued in our time on a very broad front; yet the authors of this text feel that not enough mathematical talent is devoted to furthering the interaction of mathematics with other sciences and disciplines. This imbalance is harmful to both mathematics and its users; to redress this imbalance is an educational task which must start at the beginning of the college curriculum. No course is more suited for this than the calculus; there students can learn at first hand that mathe­ matics is the language in which scientific ideas can be precisely formulated, that science is a source of mathematical ideas which profoundly shape the development of mathematics, and last but not least that mathematics can furnish brilliant answers to important scientific problems. Our purpose in writing this text has been to emphasize this relation of calculus to science. We hope to accomplish this by devoting whole connected chapters to single-or several related-scientific topics, letting the reader observe how the notions of calculus are used to formulate the basic laws of science and how the methods of calculus are used to deduce consequences of those basic laws. Thus the student sees calculus at work on worthwhile tasks.