Hilbert's talk at the second International Congress of 1900 in Paris marked the beginning of a new era in the calculus of variations. A development began which, within a few decades, brought tremendous success, highlighted by the 1929 theorem of Ljusternik and Schnirelman on the existence of three distinct prime closed geodesics on any compact surface of genus zero, and the 1930/31 solution of Plateau's problem by Douglas and Radó. The book gives a concise introduction to variational methods and presents an overview of areas of current research in the field. The third edition gives a survey on new developments in the field. References have been updated and a small number of mistakes have been rectified.weiterlesen