ABSTRACT
Several years ago I was invited to contemplate being marooned on the proverbial desert island. What book would I most wish to have there, in addition to the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare? M y immediate answer was: Abramowitz and Stegun's Handbook of Mathematical Functions. I f I could substitute for the Bible, I would choose Gradsteyn and Ryzhik's Tabie of Integrals, Series and Products. Compounding the impiety, I would give up Shakespeare in favor of Prudnikov, Brychkov and Marichev's Tables of Integrals and Series... On the island, there would be much time to think about waves on the water that carve ridges on the sand beneath and focus sunlight there; shapes of clouds; subtle tints in the sky. . . W i t h the arrogance that keeps us theorists going, I harbor the delusion that i t would be not too difficult to guess the underlying physics and formulate the governing equations. I t is when contemplating how to solve these equations-to convert formulations into explanations-that humili ty sets in . Then, compendia of formulas become indispensable.
