Hilbert-Courant - Softcover

I am very pleased that my books about David Hilbert, published in 1970, and Richard Courant, published in 1976, are now being issued by Springer­ Verlag in a single volume. I have always felt that they belonged together, Courant being, as I have written, the natural and necessary sequel to Hilbert­ the rest of the story. To make the two volumes more compatible when published as one, we have combined and brought up to date the indexes of names and dates. U nfortu­ nately we have had to omit Hermann Weyl's article on "David Hilbert and his mathematical work," but the interested reader can always find it in the hard­ back edition of Hilbert and in Weyl's collected papers. At the request of a number of readers we have included a listing of all of Hilbert's famous Paris problems. It was, of course, inevitable that we would give the resulting joint volume the title Hilbert-Courant.

The interlocking lives of two very different and unique men have been brought together for the first time in this combined edition of Constance Reid's two popular books. The resulting volume spans more than a century of dramatic scientific history, described in the lively nontechnical style which is the hallmark of Mrs. Reid's work.