goldstein mechanics 1980 preface

47“The genesis of Classical Mechanics lay in a PhD education disturbed by the exigencies of wartime research at MIT. When,immediately after the war, I was appointedan instructor in the physics department atHarvard, I hoped to continue my educationby teaching courses in just those fields that Iwanted to know more about. To start, I askedif I could give the graduate course inanalytical dynamics. The authorities weretaken aback at the temerity of a mereinstructor wanting to teach a graduatecourse, but returning veterans were floodingthe schools and unusual measures wereneeded in any case. I have often wondered,however, whether the rescheduling of thecourse to 9 am was intended as a mark ofreproof at my presumption! In any case, thestudents were indignant, and when Irepeated the course the following year, itwas quietly returned to its usual gentlemanlyhour of 11 am. The course was well received,and opportunities for other coursesfollowed. “About that time, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, then a smallpublishing firm in Cambridge, offered toreproduce notes for class use inexpensively.I was thus spurred to rewrite my notes onclassical mechanics, and a preliminaryedition appeared in 1948. The favorablenotice of my students (though not of all mycolleagues) led, after several furtherrewritings, to formal publication in 1950. “Looking back, it’s easy to see that Classical Mechanics appeared at just the right time.Physics as a profession was in favor, and therolls of graduate students in the field seemedto be increasing exponentially. Availabletexts in analytical dynamics were all prewarin date, and for their inspiration looked backmostly to the pedanticism of the 19th-century British treatments. A fresh approachoriented instead around the formalisms andtechniques of quantum mechanics and othermodern applications could not fail to meetwith approval. That it has continued overthe years to be used and taught from issomething I’m grateful for, even if I’m notquite sure of the reasons for its success. Thenumber and nature of the citations indicatethe book has been useful as a standardreference for a variety of topics. A significantfraction of the citations, for example, are tothe definition of the Euler angles, eventhough the convention I chose is differentfrom that which subsequently becameentrenched in quantum mechanics. “A second edition of Classical Mechanics 1 has been in the making for many years. Afterlong gestation pains, it finally appeared inJuly 1980, almost 30 years to the month after the publication of the first edition. The text has been considerably expanded, with a newchapter on canonical perturbation theory,and the number of exercises increased by250 percent. May it receive as good areception as the first edition!”An extensive advanced exposition ofclassical mechanics is given withemphasis on the modern physicsview-point. Newtonian, Lagrangian, andHamilton formulations are described.Canonical transformation theory isdiscussed in detail. Chapters oncanonical perturbation theory (in thesecond edition 1) and classical field theory conclude the book. [The SCI® indicates that this book has been cited over 1,435times since 1961.] Herbert Goldstein Department of Applied Physics and Nuclear Engineering Columbia University New York, NY 10027 December 8, 1980CC/NUMBER 2 JANUARY 12, 1981This Week’s Citation Classic Goldstein H. Classical mechanics. Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1950. 399 p. [Harvard University, Cambridge, MA] 1. Goldstein H. Classical Mechanics, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. 1980. 672 p.