Title: Smithsonian mathematical formulae and tables...
Publisher: Washington, D.C. : Smithsonian Institution.
Publication Date: 1922
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st Edition
viii, 314 pages. 73 in series note at head of title has been covered by label: 74. Four blank pages have been bound into each major section of the book, apparently as a convenience for recording notes and comments. Pages evenly toned. 15 x 23 cm. Original gilt stamped green cloth boards (extremely slightly shelf worn). Small white label on spine. 2 small ink oval stamps on front endpapers. Provenance:-Interstate Commerce Commission Library (1920s American Agency for Consolidation of the Railways of the United States into a Limited Number of Systems). Edwin Plimpton Adams was a professor of physics at Princeton University from 1903 to 1943. His papers are archived at Princeton and indicate that one of his areas of interest was elliptic function formulae. As the author explains in the preface, the object of this collection of mathematical formulae was to bring together, compactly, some of the more useful results of mathematical analysis for the benefit of those who regard mathematics as a tool, and not as an end in itself. For the tables on elliptic functions, Adams turned to Sir Alfred George Greenhill (1847 1927), professor of mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. Greenhill was acknowledged as the foremost expert on the subject at the time. He wrote an introduction and supervised the work of Richard Lionel Hippsley (1853 1936), who calculated the tables. The work commences with a chart giving the symbols used and then launches without further tutorial matter into the formulae found useful in the various branches of mathematics: algebra, geometry, trigonometry, vector analysis, curvilinear coordinates, infinite series, differential equations, etc. The first material of a tutorial nature is written by Professor F. R. Moulton, of the University of Chicago, entitled Numerical solution of differential equations. The previously mentioned Introduction to the tables of elliptic functions by Professor Greenhill (in which the pioneering work of Legendre is cited) follows. Tables of elliptic functions prepared by R. L. Hippisley are at the close. Reference: Flet MT Vol. II, p. 933 A6 Erwin Tomash Library. Seller Inventory # 5073