13 Feb
2013
13 Feb
'13
9:25 a.m.
I learned about elliptic functions from the three chapters on that subject in Whittaker & Watson "Modern Analysis". This is very elegant and pretty mathematics. Elliptic functions appear in the solution to numerous physics problems: pendulum motion, rigid body motion, nonlinear optics. The next step beyond is functions invariant under discontinuous groups of (az+b)/(cz+d) transformations. For that, read Ford, "Automorphic Functions". All these are over the complex number field. -- Gene