SIAM News article on Handbooks

[thk (Tom H. Koornwinder)]

The March 1998 issue of SIAM News has an article by Barry A. Cipra
entitled "A new testament for special functions?". It is inspired by
the minisymposium "Handbooks for Special Functions and the World Wide Web"
which was held at the SIAM 40th Anniversary Meeting last year.
I think the article does a good job. Eventually, it will also appear
on the web at http://www.siam.org/siamnews/.
The article has one news item which was not mentioned earlier in
OP-SF NET:

Ismail and Walter van Assche at the Katholieke Universiteit
Leuven in Belgium are heading an international effort to bring the Bateman
Project up to date.           ...........
Ismail envisions the production of seven or eight volumes
over the next decade. He and Askey, along with Roelof Koekoek at the
Delft University of Technology and Rene Swarttouw at the Free
University of Amsterdam, are working on the first volume, on
orthogonal polynomials. (Information can be found on the Web, at
http://aw.twi.tudelft.nl/~koekoek/). Work is also under way on a second
volume, on special functions in number theory and combinatorics.


		Tom Koornwinder
		thk@wins.uva.nl