Which Introductory PDE Book Best Suits a Physics Major?

[physicist311]

Does anybody know a good introductory book on PDEs? I am a physics major and something applied is what I'm looking for. It must have a good amount on Fourier methods too. Thanks.

 

[dx]

This is actually quite an old book, but I love it: "Partial Differential Equations in Physics" by Arnold Sommerfeld. Emphasis on applications (a whole chapter devoted to applications to 'problems of radio'), written by a physicist for physicists, and has exercises with solutions.

 

[physicist311]

Hey dx, first let me say thanks for posting. It is sometimes hard to get people to reply and I appreciate it. Onto the book, I looked over the table of contents at amazon and it looks good by first inspection. Also, the solutions to problems is a huge factor in my decision whether or not to buy the book. Can you tell me anything else like: ingenuity of the problems, scope of the book, amount of rigor, friendly writing style, etc...? Thanks again.

 

[dx]

Hi physicist311,

The exercises are usually non-trivial, but the good thing is you won't get frustrated since there are hints and solutions. If you want to use this book, I suggest that you also get an easier supplementary book which has a lot of easy practice problems just to get familiar with concepts, especially if you haven't seen stuff like Fourier series before. The amount of rigor is just right for physicists.

 

[Winzer]

I usedhttp://books.google.co.nz/books?id=...IjuBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1"
by Yehuda Pinchover, Jacob Rubinstein for this semester. I think it's an accessible book for beginners. Answers are in the back to odd problems.

 

[Landau]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/048667620X/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[physicsnoob93]

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0387791450/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[qspeechc]

I think Haberman's book is pretty good; it's very applications focused.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/013263807X/?tag=pfamazon01-20

 

[n!kofeyn]

Two books I recently came across are:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/048667620X/?tag=pfamazon01-20 by Stanley Farlow
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0072325704/?tag=pfamazon01-20 by Ruel Churchill and James Ward Brown

Be sure to check out their reviews. They are both great books.

 

[malawi_glenn]

I think Haberman's book is pretty good; it's very applications focused.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/013263807X/?tag=pfamazon01-20

It is modern and nice, but really expensive though..

 

[Daverz]

It is modern and nice, but really expensive though..

Yeah, but does one really need the 4th edition? The 2nd edition is cheap. After that the publisher is just trying to force students to buy new.

 

[malawi_glenn]

Yeah, but does one really need the 4th edition? The 2nd edition is cheap. After that the publisher is just trying to force students to buy new.

I have the second edition and I don't think it covers spherical problems as good as needed for quantum mechanics, I had to do some photocopies from the 4th ed for supplementation