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PREFACE

To describe the scope of this work, I must go back to when Stan Gibilisco, editorial advisor of the
dictionary series, asked me to be in charge of this volume. I appreciated the idea of a compendium
of mathematical terms used in the sciences and engineering for two reasons. Firstly, mathematical
definitions are not easily located; when I need insight on a technical term, I turn to the analytic index
of a monograph that seems related; recently I was at a loss when trying to find “Vi`ete’s formulas ,”
∗
a term used by an Eastern-European student in his homework. I finally located it in the Encyclopaedic
Dictionary of Mathematics, and that brought home the value of a collection of esoteric terms, put
together by many people acquainted with different sectors of the literature. Secondly, at this time we
do not yet have a tradition of cross-disciplinary terms; in fact, much interaction between mathematics
and other scientific areas is in the making, and times (and timing) could not be more exciting. The
EPSRC ∗∗ newsletter Newsline (available on the web at www.epsrc.ac.uk), devoted to mathematics,
in July 2001 rightly states “Even amongst fellow scientists, mathematicians are often viewed with
suspicionasbeinginterestedinproblemsfarremovedfromtherealworld. But...thingsarechanging.”
Rapidly, though, my enthusiasm turned to dismay upon realizing that any strategy I could devise
was doomed to fail the test of “completeness.” What is a dictionary? At best, a rapidly superseded
record of word/symbol usage by some groups of people; the only really complete achievement in
that respect is, in my view, the OED. Not only was such an undertaking beyond me, the very attempt
at bridging disciplines and importing words from one to another is still an ill-defined endeavor —
scientists themselves are unsure how to translate a term into other disciplines.
As a consequence what service I can hope this book to provide, at best, is that of a pocket manual
with which a voyager can at least get by in a basic fashion in a foreign-speaking country. I also hope
that it will have the small virtue to be a first of its kind, a path-breaker that will prompt others to follow.
Not being an applied mathematician myself, I relied on the generosity of the following team of authors:
Lorenzo Fatibene, Mauro Francaviglia, and Rudolf Schmid, experts of mathematical physics; Toni
Kazic, a biologist with broad and daring interdisciplinary experience; Hong Qian, a mathematical
biologist; and Ralf Hiptmair, who works on numerical solution of differential equations. For oper-
ations research, Giovanni Andreatta (University of Padua, Italy), directed me to H.J. Greenberg’s web
glossary, and Toni Kazic referred me to the most extensive web glossary in chemistry, authored by
A.D. McNaught and A. Wilkinson. To all these people I owe much more than thanks for their work. I
know the reward that would most please them is for this book to have served its readers well: please
write me any comments or suggestions, and I will gratefully try to put them to future use.
Emma Previato, Department of Mathematics and Statistics
Boston University, Boston, MA 02215-2411 – USA
e-mail: ep@bu.edu

∗ They are just the elementary symmetric polynomials, in case anyone beside me didn’t know
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK.
∗∗

© 2003 by CRC Press LLC