Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, sharp, inspiring The 17th-century calculus of Newton and Leibniz was built on shaky foundations, and it wasn't until the 18th and 19th centuries that mathematicians—especially Bolzano, Cauchy, and Weierstrass—began to establish a rigorous basis for the subject. The resulting discipline is now known to mathematicians as analysis. This book, aimed at readers with some grounding in mathematics, describes the nascent evolution of mathematical analysis, its development as a subject in its own right, and its wide-ranging applications in mathematics and science, modelling reality from acoustics to fluid dynamics, from biological systems to quantum theory. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.