| dc.description.abstract | The attempt to understand the physics of the structure of stars and their change in
time – their evolution – has been bothering many physicists and astronomers ever
since the last century. This long chain of successful research is well documented
not only by numerous papers in the corresponding journals but also by a series of
books. Some of them are so excellently written that despite their age they can still
be recommended and not only as documents of the state of the art at that time.
A few outstanding examples are the books of Emden (1907), Eddington (1926),
Chandrasekhar (1939), and Schwarzschild (1958). But our science has rapidly
expanded in the last few decades, and new aspects have emerged which could not
even be anticipated, say, 30 years ago and which today have to be carefully explored.
This does not mean, however, that our ambition is to present a complete account
of the latest and most refined numerical results. This can well be left to the large
and growing number of excellent review articles. This book is intended rather to
be a textbook that will help students and teachers to understand these results as far
as possible and present them in a simple and clear manner. We know how difficult
this is since we ourselves have tried for the largest part of our scientific career to
understand “how the stars work” – and then to make others believe it. In these
attempts we have found that often enough a simplified analytical example can be
more helpful than the discussion of an exceptionally beautiful numerical solution.
Thereforewe do not hesitate to includemany simple considerations and estimates, if
necessary, even at the expense of rigour and the latest results. The reader should also
note that the list of references given in this book is not intended to represent a table
of honour for the (known and unknown) heroes of the theory of stellar structure; it is
merely designed to help the beginner to find a few first paths in the literature jungle
and presents those papers from which we have more or less randomly chosen the
numbers for figures and numerical examples (There are others of at least the same
quality!). | en_US |
