ABSTRACT
THE GREAT ACHIEVEMENTS in engineering deeply affect the lives of all of us and also serve to remind us of
the importance of mathematics. Interest in mathematics has grown steadily with these engineering
achievements and with concomitant advances in pure physical science. Whereas scholars in nonscientific
fields, and even in such fields as botany, medicine, geology, etc., can communicate most of the problems and
results in nonmathematical language, this is virtually impossible in present-day engineering and physics. Yet it
is interesting to note that until the beginning of the twentieth century, engineers regarded calculus as
something of a mystery. Modern students of engineering now study calculus, as well as differential equations,
complex variables, vector analysis, orthogonal functions, and a variety of other topics in applied analysis. The
study of systems has ushered in matrix algebra and, indeed, most engineering students now take linear algebra
as a core topic early in their mathematical education.
