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Encyclopedia :: encyclopedia : Special functions (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-14) |
 | | While trigonometry can be codified, as was clear already to expert mathematicians of the eighteenth century (if not before), the search for a complete and unified theory of special functions has continued since the nineteenth century. |
| | The high point of the special function theory in the period 1850-1900 was the theory of elliptic functions; treatises that were essentially complete, such as that of Tannery and Molk, could be written as handbooks to all the basic identities of the theory. |
| | They were based on complex analysis techniques; from that time onwards it would be assumed that analytic function theory, which had already unified the trigonometric and exponential functions, was a fundamental tool. |
| www.hallencyclopedia.com /Special_functions (642 words) |
