Owen de Lange is a Professor of Physics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. His research interests include: electromagnetic theory, molecular physics, dislocation interactions, superconductivity and educational physics. He is co-author of two monographs: Operator methods in quantum mechanics, and Multipole theory in electromagnetism. The former book was awarded the University of Natal book prize (1994) and the Bill Venter/Altron award (1995) for research published in book form.

John Pierrus is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Physics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. He has published research in the fields of chemical kinetics, solid state physics, molecular physics, gas dynamics and educational physics. His teaching interests include electromagnetic theory and classical mechanics at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level.

"The authors make significant contributions to classical mechanics by considering more complex and hence more realistic problems, many of which are only tractable on the computer ... The book is enormously pedagogical and useful. It is a very good resource for teaching standard theoretical and computational classical mechanics. The range of topics within the book is impressive." -- South African Journal of Science

"de Lange and Pierrus have produced a well-balanced text which fits its purpose well and stands to appeal to a broad range of readers." -- Contemporary Physics