# Differential and Integral Calculus

###### Edmund Landau
Publisher:
American Mathematical Society
Publication Date:
2001
Number of Pages:
372
Format:
Hardcover
Edition:
3
Price:
41.00
ISBN:
0821828304
Category:
Textbook
BLL Rating:

The Basic Library List Committee suggests that undergraduate mathematics libraries consider this book for acquisition.

[Reviewed by
Allen Stenger
, on
06/12/2009
]

This book is a completely rigorous treatment of calculus. It might be called “Pure Calculus” because there are no applications and it treats calculus as a subject worthy of study in itself. The book was written in 1934, based on Landau’s courses at Göttingen, was translated into English in 1950, and is still in print in 2009.

The book starts out, not with epsilons and deltas, but with limits of sequences. It has a very interesting (although far from intuitive) development of the natural logarithm of x as the limit of k(x(1/k) – 1) as k goes to infinity through the powers of 2. It’s surprisingly easy to prove all the familiar properties of logarithms (without any reference to a general exponential), and then define the number e and the general exponential in terms of logarithms.

Power series are developed early, and used to define the transcendental functions. There’s just a little bit of several-variable calculus: partial derivatives are introduced, but only in support of the implicit function theorem. Integration is handled relatively briefly, and apart from the integration of rational functions there’s not a lot about techniques of integration.

The book has some goodies rarely found in calculus books: the Weierstrass approximation theorem, a proof of the fundamental theorem of algebra, a proof that rational functions can always be expressed in terms of partial fractions, the basic properties of the gamma function (including Euler’s reflection formula), and some existence theorems for Fourier series.

The book includes a large number of counterexamples. Whenever the bigger theorems are stated and proven, Landau usually shows that all the hypotheses are needed by dropping each one and giving a counterexample. In some cases the counterexamples are very elaborate, such as van der Waerden’s continuous, nowhere differentiable function, and a continuous function whose Fourier series diverges.

The calculus market has changed a lot since 1934, and by present-day standards this is not even a textbook: it has no exercises, no applications, and not even any drawings! What it does have, though, is clear and concise proofs of everything in single-variable calculus. This book, and G. H. Hardy’s Pure Mathematics, are the ones I turn to when I need a clear and rigorous proof of a calculus fact.

Allen Stenger is a math hobbyist, library propagandist, and retired computer programmer. He volunteers in his spare time at MathNerds.com, a math help site that fosters inquiry learning. His mathematical interests are number theory and classical analysis.

Part One. Differential Calculus

• Limits as $n=\infty$
• Logarithms, powers, and roots
• Functions and continuity
• Limits as $x=\xi$
• Definition of the derivative
• General theorems on the formation of the derivative
• Increase, decrease, maximum, minimum
• General properties of continuous functions on closed intervals
• Rolle's theorem and the theorem of the mean
• Derivatives of higher order; Taylor's theorem
• "0/0" and similar matters
• Infinite series
• Uniform convergence
• Power series
• Exponential series and binomial series
• The trigonometric functions
• Functions of two variables and partial derivatives
• Inverse functions and implicit functions
• The inverse trigonometric functions
• Some necessary algebraic theorems

Part Two. Integral Calculus

• Definition of the integral
• Basic formulas of the integral calculus
• The integration of rational functions
• The integration of certain non-rational functions
• Concept of the definite integral
• Theorems on the definite integral
• The integration of infinite series
• The improper integral
• The integral with infinite limits
• The gamma function
• Fourier series
• Index of definitions
• Subject index