Ebook: Stability of Motion

The' theory of the stability of motion has gained increasing signifi-
cance in the last decades as is apparent from the large number of publi-
cations on th subject. A considerable part of this work. is concerned
vith practical problems, especially problems from the area of controls
and servo-mechanisms, and concrete problems from engineering were
the ones which first gave the decisive impetus for the expansion and
modern development of stability theory.
In comparison with the many single publications, which are num-
bered in the thousands, the number of books on stability theory, and
especially books not written in Russian, is extraordinarily small. Books
which give the student a complete introduction into the topic and which
simultaneously familiarize him with the newer results of the theory and
their applications to practical questions are completely lacking. I hope
that the book which I hereby present will to some extent do justice to
this double task. I have endeavored to treat stability theory as a mathe-
matical discipline, to characterize its methods, and to prove its theorems
rigorously and completely as. mathematical theorems. Still I always
strove to make reference to applications, to illustrate the arguments
with examples, and to stress the interaction between theory and practice.