Wu-yi Hsiang - Böcker

The student of calculus is entitled to ask what calculus is and what it can be used for. This short book provides an answer.The author starts by demonstrating that calculus provides a mathematical tool for the quantitative analysis of a wide range of dynamical phenomena and systems with variable quantities.He then looks at the origins and intuitive sources of calculus, its fundamental methodology, and its general framework and basic structure, before examining a few typical applications.The author's style is direct and pedagogical. The new student should find that the book provides a clear and strong grounding in this important technique.

The student of calculus is entitled to ask what calculus is and what it can be used for. This short book provides an answer.The author starts by demonstrating that calculus provides a mathematical tool for the quantitative analysis of a wide range of dynamical phenomena and systems with variable quantities.He then looks at the origins and intuitive sources of calculus, its fundamental methodology, and its general framework and basic structure, before examining a few typical applications.The author's style is direct and pedagogical. The new student should find that the book provides a clear and strong grounding in this important technique.

This invaluable book provides a concise and systematic introduction to the theory of compact connected Lie groups and their representations, as well as a complete presentation of the structure and classification theory. It uses a non-traditional approach and organization. There is a proper balance between, and a natural combination of, the algebraic and geometric aspects of Lie theory, not only in technical proofs but also in conceptual viewpoints. For example, the orbital geometry of adjoint action, is regarded as the geometric organization of the totality of non-commutativity of a given compact connected Lie group, while the maximal tori theorem of É. Cartan and the Weyl reduction of the adjoint action on G to the Weyl group action on a chosen maximal torus are presented as the key results that provide a clear-cut understanding of the orbital geometry.

This invaluable book provides a concise and systematic introduction to the theory of compact connected Lie groups and their representations, as well as a complete presentation of the structure and classification theory. It uses a non-traditional approach and organization. There is a proper balance between, and a natural combination of, the algebraic and geometric aspects of Lie theory, not only in technical proofs but also in conceptual viewpoints. For example, the orbital geometry of adjoint action, is regarded as the geometric organization of the totality of non-commutativity of a given compact connected Lie group, while the maximal tori theorem of É. Cartan and the Weyl reduction of the adjoint action on G to the Weyl group action on a chosen maximal torus are presented as the key results that provide a clear-cut understanding of the orbital geometry.

The dense packing of microscopic spheres (i.e. atoms) is the basic geometric arrangement in crystals of mono-atomic elements with weak covalent bonds, which achieves the optimal “known density” of B/√18. In 1611, Johannes Kepler had already “conjectured” that B/√18 should be the optimal “density” of sphere packings. Thus, the central problems in the study of sphere packings are the proof of Kepler's conjecture that B/√18 is the optimal density, and the establishing of the least action principle that the hexagonal dense packings in crystals are the geometric consequence of optimization of density. This important book provides a self-contained proof of both, using vector algebra and spherical geometry as the main techniques and in the tradition of classical geometry.

This volume consists of nine lectures on selected topics of Lie group theory. We provide the readers a concise introduction as well as a comprehensive "tour of revisiting" the remarkable achievements of S Lie, W Killing, É Cartan and H Weyl on structural and classification theory of semi-simple Lie groups, Lie algebras and their representations; and also the wonderful duet of Cartan's theory on Lie groups and symmetric spaces.With the benefit of retrospective hindsight, mainly inspired by the outstanding contribution of H Weyl in the special case of compact connected Lie groups, we develop the above theory via a route quite different from the original methods engaged by most other books.We begin our revisiting with the compact theory which is much simpler than that of the general semi-simple Lie theory; mainly due to the well fittings between the Frobenius-Schur character theory and the maximal tori theorem of É Cartan together with Weyl's reduction (cf. Lectures 1-4). It is a wonderful reality of the Lie theory that the clear-cut orbital geometry of the adjoint action of compact Lie groups on themselves (i.e. the geometry of conjugacy classes) is not only the key to understand the compact theory, but it actually already constitutes the central core of the entire semi-simple theory, as well as that of the symmetric spaces (cf. Lectures 5-9). This is the main reason that makes the succeeding generalizations to the semi-simple Lie theory, and then further to the Cartan theory on Lie groups and symmetric spaces, conceptually quite natural, and technically rather straightforward.