Abramowitz and Stegun

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Abramowitz and Stegun is the informal name of a mathematical reference work edited by Milton Abramowitz and Irene Stegun of the U.S. National Bureau of Standards (now the National Institute of Standards and Technology). Its full title is Handbook of Mathematical Functions with Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables.

Since it was first published in 1964, the 1000+ page Handbook has been one of the most comprehensive sources of information on special functions, containing definitions, identities, approximations, plots, and tables of values of numerous functions used in virtually all fields of applied mathematics. The notation used in the Handbook is the de facto standard for much of applied mathematics today.

At the time of its publication, the Handbook was an essential resource for practitioners. Nowadays, computer algebra systems have replaced the function tables, but the Handbook remains an important reference source. The foreword discusses a meeting in 1954 in which it was agreed that "the advent of high-speed computing equipment changed the task of table making but definitely did not remove the need for tables".

Because the Handbook is the product of US Government employees acting in official capacity, it is not protected by copyright. While it can be ordered from the Government Printing Office, it has also been reprinted by commercial publishers, most notably Dover Publications (ISBN 0-486-61272-4), and can be legally viewed and downloaded off the web.

BibTeX entry:

@Book{abramowitz+stegun,
  author =       "Milton Abramowitz and Irene A. Stegun",
  title =        "Handbook of Mathematical Functions with
                  Formulas, Graphs, and Mathematical Tables",
  publisher =    "Dover",
  year =         1964,
  address =      "New York",
  edition =      "ninth Dover printing, tenth GPO printing",
  isbn =         "0-486-61272-4"
}

[edit] See also

• Numerical analysis
• Philip J. Davis, author of the Gamma function section and other sections of the book

[edit] External links

• How to order the book from GPO.
• The book in scanned format, hosted at Simon Fraser University, ConvertIt.
• A history of the activities leading up to and surrounding the development of the Handbook can be found at NIST.
• The digital successor to the Handbook is currently under development at NIST and is expected to be released as “Digital Library of Mathematical Functions” (DLMF) in 2007. More information can be found at NIST.