I should first acknowledge six generations of students at IISc who went through the course and gave valuable inputs. Some of them even solved and latexed the solutions of many problems. The following students have enthusiastically and uncomplainingly supported me as teaching assistants. They certainly deserve a special mention:
Jan-Apr 1992 | R.Venugopal, Somyabrata Bhattacharya |
Aug-Dec 1993 | R. Venugopal, G. Phanendra Babu |
Aug-Dec 1994 | S.R. Prakash, Rajalakshmi Iyer, N.S. Narayana Swamy, L.M. Khan |
Aug-Dec 1995 | S.R. Prakash, N. Gokulmuthu, V.S. Anil Kumar, G. Suthindran, K.S. Raghunath |
Aug-Dec 1998 | Manimaran, Ashes Ganguly, Arun, Rileen Sinha, Dhiman Ghosh |
Aug-Dec 1999 | M. Bharat Kumar, R. Sai Anand, K. Sriram, Chintan Amrit |
The Latexing of this document was done flawlessly by Renugopal first and then by Mrs Mary. The figures were done with good care by Amit Garde, Arghya Mukherjee, Mrs Mary, and Chandra Sekhar. My thanks to them. Numerous students at CSA have gone through drafts at various points and provided valuable feedback.
Behind any of my efforts of this kind, there are two personalities whose blessings form the inspirational force. The first is my divine Mother, who is no more but whose powerful personality continues to be a divine driving force. The second is my revered Father who is the light of my life. He continues to guide me like a beacon. Of course, I simply cannot forget the love and affection of my extended family, which is like a distributed yet tightly coupled enterprise.
There are bound to be numerous typographical/logical/grammatical/stylistic errors in this the first draft. I urge the readers to unearth as many as possible and to intimate to me on the email (hari[at]csa[dot]iisc[dot]ernet[dot]in). Any suggestions/comments/criticism on any aspect of this lecture notes are most welcome.
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Outline | Preface | Contents |