《经典力学的数学方法》

Part of Preface to the second edition

The main part of this book was written twenty years ago. The ideas and methods of symplectic geometry, developed in this book, have now found many applications in mathematical physics and in other domains of applied mathematics, as well as in pure mathematics itself. Especially, the theory of short wave asymptotic expansions has reached a very sophiscated level, with many important applications to optics, wave theory, acoustics, spectroscopy, and even chemistry; this development was parallel to the development of the theories of Lagrange and Legendre singularities, that is, of singularities of caustics and of wave fronts, of their topology and their perestroikas (in Russian metamorphoses were always called "perestroikas," as in "Morse perestroika" for the English "Morse surgery"; now that the word perestroika has become international, we may preserve the Russian term in translation and are not obliged to substitute "metamorphoses" for "perestroikas" when speaking of wave fronts, caustics, and so on.