When I was in grad school, my advisor asked me to study his out-of-print book, Hilbert Space Methods in Partial Differential Equations. I believe I had a photocopy of a photocopy; I don’t recall ever seeing the original book. I pored over that stack of copies line by line while preparing for my qualifying exams.
Then this evening I was browsing a used book store and was shocked to find a copy of the book, a Dover reprint (ISBN 0486474437).
It was an odd feeling to find what was once a precious and mysterious book available for $5.99 as part of a rag-tag assortment of mostly elementary/popular used math books.
FYI, it’s available for $3.26 on Amazon as a “bargain book”.
What did you pour over it, a liquid or a gas? Did it make it any less illegible? Maybe it would have helped if you’d pored over it instead.
Just looked on Wiktionary to make sure this confusion isn’t due to a British/American difference as I’ve seen it quite a lot recently. Doesn’t seem to be but it’s mildly interesting that “pore” is the older word in English, “pour” coming more recently from Celtic.
There are so many great older math books reprinted as Dover editions. “Introduction to Spectral Theory in Hilbert Space” is also good, on the same general topic.
Was this bought at HPB in Austin? If so, are there more copies available? Thanks
I still remember the delight in finding an ancient copy of the classic 1955 ‘Aeroelasticity’ by Bisplinghoff, Ashley and Halfman in a used bookstore. It was VERY hard to find before the Dover edition came out.
Still probably the best introductory text for the self taught aeroelastician. Turns out that Bessel functions of the 2nd kind describe the aeroelastic kernel. Which was approximated using a function with about 20 exponential terms (!) in FORTRAN in a code we used.
I always meant to see it I could fit it better with some piecewise cubic splines, never actually got around to it.
Op Amp books, I think, in LA. Still in business apparently, motto: “WE BUY USED BOOKS … But we don’t pay much.”
Thank you for introducing the book. Interesting title. Want to buy it!