A Practical Guide to Splines

by Carl R. de Boor

This book is based on the author’s experience with calculations involving polynomial splines, presenting those parts of the theory especially useful in calculations and stressing the representation of splines as weighted sums of B-splines. The B-spline theory is developed directly from the recurrence relations without recourse to divided differences. This reprint includes redrawn figures, and most formal statements are accompanied by proofs.

366 pages, Hardcover

First published August 26, 1994

About the author

Carl-Wilhelm Reinhold de Boor is a German-American mathematician and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Having earned only a high school diploma after 3 and a half years of study at Hamburg University, de Boor entered Harvard as a graduate student of mathematics. After working for a year as a research assistant to Garrett Birkhoff, he went to work for General Motors Research in Warren, Michigan, where he met splines. He received his first postgraduate degree, a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, in 1966, and then became an assistant professor at Purdue University. In 1972, he accepted a position as professor of mathematics and computer science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, working out of the UW's Army Math Research Center, which had recently been bombed in opposition to the Vietnam War.