The Integration of Functions of a Single Variable

by G.H. Hardy

The first edition of Hardy's Integration of Functions of a Single Variable was published in 1905, with this 1916 second edition being reprinted up until 1966. Now this digital reprint of the second edition will allow the twenty-first-century reader a fresh exploration of the text. Hardy's chapters provide a comprehensive review of elementary functions and their integration, the integration of algebraic functions and Laplace's principle, and the integration of transcendental functions. The text is also saturated with explanatory notes and usable examples centred around the elementary problem of indefinite integration and its solutions. Appendices contain useful bibliographic references and a workable demonstration of Abel's proof, rewritten specifically for the second edition. This innovative tract will continue to be of interest to all mathematicians specialising in the theory of integration and its historical development.

Genres: Mathematics

76 pages, Paperback

Published February 17, 2011

About the author

Godfrey Harold Hardy FRS was a prominent English mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis.

Non-mathematicians usually know him for A Mathematician's Apology, his essay from 1940 on the aesthetics of mathematics. The apology is often considered one of the best insights into the mind of a working mathematician written for the layman.

His relationship as mentor, from 1914 onwards, of the Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan has become celebrated. Hardy almost immediately recognized Ramanujan's extraordinary albeit untutored brilliance, and Hardy and Ramanujan became close collaborators. In an interview by Paul Erdős, when Hardy was asked what his greatest contribution to mathematics was, Hardy unhesitatingly replied that it was the discovery of Ramanujan. He called their collaboration "the one romantic incident in my life."