Mathematics is playing an ever more important role in the physical and biological sciences, provoking a blurring of boundaries between scientific disciplines and a resurgence of interest in the modern as well as the cl- sical techniques of applied mathematics. This renewal of interest, both in research and teaching, has led to the establishment of the series: Texts in Applied Mathematics (TAM). The development of new courses is a natural consequence of a high level of excitement on the research frontier as newer techniques, such as numerical and symbolic computer systems, dynamical systems, and chaos mix with and reinforce the traditional methods of applied mathematics. Thus, the purpose of this textbook series is to meet the current and future needs of these advances and encourage the teaching of new courses. TAM will publish textbooks suitable for use in advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate courses, and will complement the Applied Ma- ematical Sciences (AMS) series, which will focus on advanced textbooks and research-level monographs. Preface "It is impossible to exaggerate the extent to which modern applied mathematics has been shaped and fueled by the g- eral availability of fast computers with large memories. Their impact on mathematics, both applied and pure, is comparable to the role of the telescopes in astronomy and microscopes in biology." Peter Lax, Siam Rev. Vol. 31 No. 4 Congratulations! You have chosen to study partial differential equations.

From the reviews:

"Presents an introductory course to study partial differential equations especially from the computational point of view. At the end of each chapter the reader can find a very good selection of fine exercises or projects ... . The language of the book is simple and easy to read which will be highly appreciated by its readers. The book can be very useful for undergraduate and graduate students in mathematics and engineering." (Angela Handlovicová, Zentralblatt MATH, 1063, 2005)

Autorentext

Professor Aslak Tveito is the managing director of Simula Research Laboratory. His research is focused on computing the electrical activity in the heart. Tveito is the co-author of more than 60 papers published in international peer-reviewed journals, and one textbook introducing partial differential equations. Tveito has also edited four books published internationally. Professor Hans Petter Langtangen is the director of Center for Biomedical Computing, a Norwegian Center of Excellence at Simula Research Laboratory, and a professor of computer science at the University of Oslo. His research concerns numerical methods and software tools for continuum mechanical problems. Langtangen has published more than 40 journal papers, and more than 50 peer-reviewed contributions to conference proceedings and books. He is the author of three textbooks and an a co-editor of three books. Langtangen has been an active developer of open source and commercial software systems for computational sciences. He is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and serves on the editorial board of five leading international journals. Dr. Nielsen is a research scientist at Simula Research Laboratory where he investigates whether it is possible to compute the position and size of heart infarctions from ECG recordings. He has published a number of papers on computational mathematics and during his years at Norwegian Computing Center he solved many scientific computing problems for the Norwegian oil industry. The research interests of Professor Xing Cai center around parallel numerical methods and software for solving partial differential equations. He has more than 50 peer-reviewed publications in international journals and conference proceedings.

Inhalt
Setting the Scene.- Two-Point Boundary Value Problems.- The Heat Equation.- Finite Difference Schemes for the Heat Equation.- The Wave Equation.- Maximum Principles.- Poisson's Equation in Two Space Dimensions.- Orthogonality and General Fourier Series.- Convergence of Fourier Series.- The Heat Equation Revisited.- Reaction-Diffusion Equations.- Applications of the Fourier Transform.