Starting with the Unit Circle: Background to Higher Analysis

It is with great pleasure that I am writing the preface for my little book, "Starting with the Unit Circle", in the office of Springer Verlag in Heidel­ berg. This is symbolic of the fact that I have once again joined in the main­ stream of scientific exchange between East and West. Since the establishment of the People's Republic of China, I have written "An Introduction to Number Theory" for the young people studying Number Theory: for the young people studying algebra, Prof. Wan Zhe-xian (Wan Che-hsien) and I have written "Classical Groups"; for those studying the theory of functions of several complex variables, I have written "Har­ monic Analysis of Functions of Several Complex Variables in the Classical Domains", * and for university students I have written "Introduction to Higher Mathematics". The present volume had been written for those who were beginning to engage in research at the Chinese University of Science and Technology and at the Guangdong Zhongshan University. Its purpose is none other than to make the students see the crucial ideas in their simplest manifestations, so that when they go on to the more complex parts of modem mathematics, they will not be without guidance. For example, in the first chapter when I point out that the Poisson kernel is just the Jacobian of some transformation, I am merely revealing the source of one of the main tools in my work on harmonic analysis in the classical domains.