Talanta 52 (2000) 353
www.elsevier.com/locate/talanta
Book review
Analytic Methods in Physics by C. Harper. Wiley-
VCH, Berlin, 1999. 439 pp. ISBN 3-527-40216-0;
45.00
The author writes in the preface that the book
is intended for undergraduate students in physics,
applied mathematics and engineering and that the
goal is to provide essential mathematical back-
ground for understanding fundamental physics.
From an applied mathematical point of view, most
of the mathematical topics are also interesting for
chemists (physical chemistry, quantum chemistry,
crystallography etc.), especially the sections on
vectors, matrix algebra, Fourier series and tensors.
The author tries to cover as much as possible of
different mathematical tools in a very concise way.
Some chapters and sections are fairly detailed with
some very interesting and useful background. Also
the historical footnotes of the mathematicians are
interesting and good. However, a majority of the
chapters are too briefly explained. The book is
very much a mixture of a dictionary like Beta
Mathematics Handbook by L. Rade & B. West-
gren (Chartwell-Bratt Ltd. (1988) ISBN
0862381401) and some of the much more compre-
hensive books like, e.g. Mathematical Methods for
Physicists by G. Arfken & H.J. Weber (Harcourt
Brace & Co. (1995) ISBN 0120598167). Unlike the
latter book, Analytic Methods in Physics lack
pedagogical strength in many aspects. Some exam-
ples are given in each section, but where are the
answers to the problems? It is an absolute neces-
sity to have answers to the problems or at least to
mention where to find them in order to learn the
concepts. In a modern book written in 1999 one
would expect either to find the answers at the end
0039-9140/00/$ - see front matter 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 0 3 9 - 9 1 4 0 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 3 4 5 - 3
of the book, on a web page or by e-mail from the
author. No such information is given in the book.
Not even a complete address of the author is
given.
The problems at the end of each chapter are
rather simple at the beginning and more advanced
at the end. The author does not seem to make any
distinction in the numbering of the examples and
the exercises. The book also contains many print-
ing errors in the examples, which may confuse the
reader. In chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9 and 10 no or very
few physics related topics are exemplified in the
problems.
Furthermore, statistical mechanics (probability
theory, quantum mechanical distribution of laws,
Gibbsian ensembles, etc.) and group theory (crys-
tallography and quantum mechanics) which are
very important and indeed fundamental subjects
in physics, are not covered or very sparsely treated
in the book.
Taking into account the above mentioned criti-
cism, the over-all rating of this book cannot be
more than three stars of five possible where five is
the best rating. If you want a dictionary and a
more comprehensive book in applied mathematics
I would rather recommend Beta Mathematics
Handbook by L. Rade & B. Westgren and some-
thing like Mathematical Methods for Physicists
for by G. Arfken & H.J. Weber instead.
2 March 2000 K. Andersson
Chemistry Department,
Glasgow Uni6ersity,
Glasgow G14 8QQ,
Scotland,
UK