Students plod through Applied Math graduate courses with desk tops groaning under many supplementary texts - linear algebra, Functional Analysis and some Upper-level Physics/ Electrical Engineering books. Learning a new topic often involves frantic hunting through numerous texts to refresh one's memory of the underlying concepts. The primary strength of Hassani's book is to spare the reader of this "where is Waldo?" tedium.

Hassani first introduces the concept of a vector space and gives numerous examples including the less "intuitive" function spaces and matrix spaces. He quickly builds upon this idea to encompass linear operators, algebras and functions defined in terms of them. Hassani's sweep of basic concepts is comprehensive and thorough while seamlessly weaving in ideas from many different branches of mathematics that provide the edifice for much of modern physics. The side notes enable one to browse through the book and find a particular topic. Interspersing the text with short biographical sketches of mathematicians who made important contributions to the field within the past three centuries adds further interest to the book.

The author has devoted much of the book to those special functions that emerge as solutions to the prototype differential equations of Physics. These functions are presented at a more generalized and rigorous mathematical setting than in many Mathematical Physics books aimed at beginning graduate students while sparing the more tedious proofs all too common in books on Functional Analysis, for example. In particular, his exposition of Green functions and Operator Theory are much more comprehensive and easy to follow than comparable treatment in other texts targeting the same readership.

Hassani continues on through Lie Groups to end this tome with a look at symmetries and conservation laws. The latter are especially relevant in Quantum Field Theory and HEP. Topics given cursory treatment in texts on these subfields of Physics are presented by Hassani in greater detail, again sparing the reader the mathematics that often serve more to sidetrack that edify.

Given the subject matter, it is no easy task to produce such a user-friendly tome, but Hassani has admirably risen to the task. I look forward to more texts by the author, perhaps one with more emphasis on Measure Theoretic approaches?

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