DIGITAL LIBRARY OF MATHEMATICAL FUNCTIONS PROFILES IN PHYSICS PUBLICATIONS.

The April 2001 issues of the two widely circulated physics magazines, Physics Today and Physics World, each have articles referring to the NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions (DLMF) project. Physics World featured a full-page news article on the DLMF project (p. 9) entitled "The bible for theorists goes electronic." The article in Physics Today addresses the need for mathematical handbooks in physics. This article is available online at http://physicstoday.org/pt/vol-54/iss-5/p11.html.

The DLMF will be an interactive, richly linked, network-based resource of mathematical reference data of use in a wide variety of fields. Freely accessible on the web, the DLMF will provide some of the basic infrastructure needed by the technical community to integrate modern information technology more fully into its day-to-day work. The digital library will replace the classic Handbook of Mathematical Functions, NBS Applied Mathematics Series 55, published in 1964. This reference, which has sold an estimated 600 000 copies and is still in print, contains formulas, graphs, and tables, which characterize the higher functions of applied mathematics. these functions (often known as special functions) are used extensively in mathematical analysis in many fields, such as physics and chemistry, and they are essential tools in modern computational modeling of phenomena in the physical sciences and engineering. The web site is http://dlmf.nist.gov/.