Engineers and physicists are more and more encountering integrations involving nonelementary integrals and higher transeendental functions. Such integrations frequently involve (not always in immediately re cognizable form) elliptic functions and elliptic integrals. The numerous books written on elliptic integrals, while of great value to the student or mathematician, are not especially suitable for the scientist whose primary objective is the ready evaluation of the integrals that occur in his practical problems. As a result, he may entirely avoid problems which lead to elliptic integrals, or is likely to resort to graphical methods or other means of approximation in dealing with all but the siruplest of these integrals. It became apparent in the course of my work in theoretical aero dynamics that there was a need for a handbook embodying in convenient form a comprehensive table of elliptic integrals together with auxiliary formulas and numerical tables of values. Feeling that such a book would save the engineer and physicist much valuable time, I prepared the present volume.

Engineers and physicists are more and more encountering integrations involving nonelementary integrals and higher transcendental functions. Such integrations frequently involve (not always in immediately re cognizable form) elliptic functions and elliptic integrals. The numerous books written on elliptic integrals, while of great value to the student or mathematician, are not especially suitable for the scientist whose primary objective is the ready evaluation of the integrals that occur in his practical problems. As a result, he may entirely avoid problems which lead to elliptic integrals, or is likely to resort to graphical methods or other means of approximation in dealing with all but the simplest of these integrals. It became apparent in the course of my work in theoretical aero dynamics that there was a need for a handbook embodying in convenient form a comprehensive table of elliptic integrals together with auxiliary formulas and numerical tables of values. Feeling that such a book would save the engineer and physicist much valuable time, I prepared the present volume.

This volume is a basic introduction to certain aspects of elliptic functions and elliptic integrals. Primarily, the elliptic functions stand out as closed solutions to a class of physical and geometrical problems giving rise to nonlinear differential equations. While these nonlinear equations may not be the types of greatest interest currently, the fact that they are solvable exactly in terms of functions about which much is known makes up for this. The elliptic functions of Jacobi, or equivalently the Weierstrass elliptic functions, inhabit the literature on current problems in condensed matter and statistical physics, on solitons and conformal representations, and all sorts of famous problems in classical mechanics. The lectures on elliptic functions have evolved as part of the first semester of a course on theoretical and mathematical methods given to first and second year graduate students in physics and chemistry at the University of North Dakota. They are for graduate students or for researchers who want an elementary introduction to the subject that nevertheless leaves them with enough of the details to address real problems. The style is supposed to be informal. The intention is to introduce the subject as a moderate extension of ordinary trigonometry in which the reference circle is replaced by an ellipse. This entre depends upon fewer tools and has seemed less intimidating that other typical introductions to the subject that depend on some knowledge of complex variables. The first three lectures assume only calculus, including the chain rule and elementary knowledge of differential equations. In the later lectures, the complex analytic properties are introduced naturally so that a more complete study becomes possible.