ABSTRACT
The main subject of this chapter-generalized functions-has in fact two names in the literature. One name, “generalized functions,” tends to be more popular among engineers and physicists; it probably goes back to Dirac and was firmly introduced in practice by Gelfand and Shilov. The other name, “distributions,” mostly preferred by mathematicians, stems from the seminal work of Laurent Schwartz. We use both terms interchangeably but prefer “distributions”—just because it is shorter, one word instead of two.
