"...a story of great mathematicians and their achievements, of practical successes and failures, and of human perfidy and generosity...this is one of the still too rare occasions in which mathematicians are shown as frail, flesh-and-blood creatures...a very worthwhile book." -CHOICE

From the reviews: "...one of the best textbooks introducing several generations of mathematicians to higher mathematics. ... This excellent book is highly recommended both to instructors and students." --Acta Scientiarum Mathematicarum, 1991

The teaching and learning of mathematics has degenerated into the realm of rote memorization, the outcome of which leads to satisfactory formal ability but not real understanding or greater intellectual independence. The new edition of this classic work seeks to address this problem. Its goal is to put the meaning back into mathematics. "Lucid . . . easily understandable".--Albert Einstein. 301 linecuts.

I am very pleased that my books about David Hilbert, published in 1970, and Richard Courant, published in 1976, are now being issued by Springer Verlag in a single volume. I have always felt that they belonged together, Courant being, as I have written, the natural and necessary sequel to Hilbert the rest of the story. To make the two volumes more compatible when published as one, we have combined and brought up to date the indexes of names and dates. U nfortu nately we have had to omit Hermann Weyl's article on "David Hilbert and his mathematical work," but the interested reader can always find it in the hard back edition of Hilbert and in Weyl's collected papers. At the request of a number of readers we have included a listing of all of Hilbert's famous Paris problems. It was, of course, inevitable that we would give the resulting joint volume the title Hilbert-Courant.