Stability of Motion
Wolfgang Hahn
Springer-Verlag
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.