Overview

Overview of Book This book evolved over a period of years as the authors taught classes in var- tional calculus and applied functional analysis to graduatestudents in engineering and mathematics. The book has likewise been in?uenced by the authors' research programs that have relied on the application of functional analytic principles to problems in variational calculus, mechanics and control theory. One of the most di?cult tasks in preparing to utilize functional, convex, and set-valued analysis in practical problems in engineering and physics is the inti- dating number of de?nitions, lemmas, theorems and propositions that constitute thefoundationsoffunctionalanalysis. Itcannotbeoveremphasizedthatfunctional analysis can be a powerful tool for analyzing practical problems in mechanics and physics. However, many academicians and researchers spend their lifetime stu- ing abstract mathematics. It is a demanding ?eld that requires discipline and devotion. It is a trite analogy that mathematics can be viewed as a pyramid of knowledge, that builds layer upon layer as more mathematical structure is put in place. The di?culty lies in the fact that an engineer or scientist typically would like to start somewhere "above the base" of the pyramid. Engineers and scientists are not as concerned, generally speaking, with the subtleties of deriving theorems axiomatically. Rather, they are interested in gaining a working knowledge of the applicability of the theory to their ?eld of interest.