Theory and Applications of Special Functions - (Developments in Mathematics) by Mourad E H Ismail & Erik Koelink (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

This volume, "Theory and Applications of Special Functions," is d- icated to Mizan Rahman in honoring him for the many important c- tributions to the theory of special functions that he has made over the years, and still continues to make. Some of the papers were presented at a special session of the American Mathematical Society Annual Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, in January 2003 organized by Mourad Ismail. Mizan Rahman's contributions are not only contained in his own - pers, but also indirectly in other papers for which he supplied useful and often essential information. We refer to the paper on his mathematics in this volume for more information. This paper contains some personal recollections and tries to describe Mizan Rahman's literary writings in his mother tongue, Bengali. An even more personal paper on Mizan Rahman is the letter by his sons, whom we thank for allowing us to reproduce it in this book. The theory of special functions is very much an application driven field of mathematics. This is a very old field, dating back to the 18th century when physicists and mathematician were looking for solutions of the fundamental differential equations of mathematical physics. Since then the field has grown enormously, and this book reflects only part of the known applications.

From the Back Cover

This book, dedicated to Mizan Rahman, is made up of a collection of articles on various aspects of q-series and special functions. Also, it includes an article by Askey, Ismail, and Koelink on Rahman's mathematical contributions and how they influenced the recent upsurge in the subject.

Audience

This book is intended for researchers and graduate students in special functions, algebraic combinatorics, quantum groups, and integrable systems.

Review Quotes

From the reviews:

"This is a collection of papers dedicated to Mizan Rahman, who is best known in the mathematical community for co-authoring with George Gasper the modern classic Basic Hypergeometric Series ... . There is also a valuable survey of Rahman's work by the editors ... . many world leaders in special functions have contributed, and the overall quality is very high. Anyone working in q-series should own this collection. It may also be of interest to people in other areas within or related to special functions." (Warren Johnson, MathDL, May, 2005)