Sabri wrote: > That must be the Marsden effect. He has a tendency to put people to > sleep.
i've seen him give talks, and he's a fine, dynamic speaker. But this literary trend he is a part of is a dead end. > I have one of his books with Hughes from 1976, "A short course in > fluid mechanics" and it goes Lemma, Lemma, Theorem, Lemma, Theorem, > Theorem, Theorem, so forth. it would be interesting to compare this, for example, to Arnold's work on fluid stability. The Soviets tend to be much more down to earth on this stuff. tho i will say the commutative diagrams look splendid in the Abraham/Marsden/Ratiu book. > One wonders what kind of "fluid mechanics" is that. *!)#*!)@!!! > I view him more of a painter than a mathematician. His papers and > books always look very beautiful i love a nice looking piece of math, in fact i tend to get it only if i can see the artwork effort which went into creating it. but somehow a whole section of the topology/nonlinear-dynamics expository writing falls flat on this score. and it should be just the opposiite: a global, geometric way of viewing dynamics ought to feel right to the eyes almost effortlessly. Marsden's Elementary Classical Analysis is a fine book in the Proposition/Lemma/Proof category. but it doesnt pretend to be anything other than an undergrad math text in analysis. ultimately, it comes down to this, does the dry terse proposition/proof/lemma style of the manifolds/topology stuff add anything worthwhile to nonlinear dynamics work? for me, no. it adds instead to the hype aspect of the subject, because it adds interesting looking headlines without any insight attached. (and Marsden has QUITE A BIT of insight into dynamics). les
